Over the last couple of weeks there seems to have been a string of robberies from camera rental houses. It’s no secret that a rental house has a lot of very expensive gear within their walls including everything from cameras to lenses to support gear. This happened to Doug Bates Video Rentals here in Nashville a few weeks ago and also happened to LensProToGo on June 15.
Over the last couple of weeks there seems to have been a string of robberies from camera rental houses. It’s no secret that a rental house has a lot of very expensive gear within their walls including everything from cameras to lenses to support gear. This happened to Doug Bates Video Rentals here in Nashville a few weeks ago and also happened to LensProToGo on June 15.
PRESS RELEASE: @LensProToGo robbed of an early estimated $500,000 worth of gear http://t.co/YCQm24r9FX pic.twitter.com/ZxURS5F6TX
— LensProToGo (@LensProToGo) June 15, 2015
Though I’m sure they all had insurance I can’t imagine the shock of coming to work one morning and realizing that hundreds of thousands of dollars of gear had been stolen. While hopefully insurance would mean the gear could be replaced these rentals houses now have an huge time expense to have to go through the process of filing and collecting on the insurance claim as well as rebuilding their rental stock. In the meantime loyal customers still have to produce so they might have to find their gear elsewhere. It can be a big revenue loss for the rental house as they gear back up to the inventory they had before the break-ins. Thankfully I’ve heard good stories about the competition stepping in and helping these folks fill their existing orders.
If you rent, buy and generally keep you eye out for gear please be aware of these events and if you encounter a deal of camera gear that seems to good to be true be aware it might be as you might be coming across some of this stolen gear. Keep your eyes open.
PDF link to the gear stolen from Doug Bates Video Rentals in Nashville, Tennessee.
LensProToGo also has a document and up updated webpage with serial numbers for their stolen gear as well.
And apparently another camera store down the road from LensProToGo, EP Levine, was robbed as well.