The version II model of the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 L USM IS lens is now available for rent. This significant update to the most popular lens in our rental catalogue has received many improvements from Canon, including better image quality, faster autofocus, closer minimum focusing distance and better image stabilization.
Subscribers to our mailing list received the first news of the new lenses and were able to make early reservations. We expect the rental schedule for the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 L USM IS II lens will fill quickly, so if you have an event you would like to rent this lens for, make your reservation early.
We have made some more improvements to the rental system. You now have push-button choices for one, two and three-week rentals from the start date you choose. You can also still enter your own end date by using the "Custom End Date" button.
Many people have found that seemingly no matter what dates they enter to check for popular lenses, the website always reports "Not Available." We're sorry about this; Summer is our busiest season and there simply are not enough lenses on our shelves to meet all the requests we receive.
We have expanded every year that we have been in business, including this year when we received our largest loan financing input to date. We'll continue to do our best to keep up.
We are accepting new reservations after making some changes to our reservation process. We continue to invoice and transact credit cards through Paypal, but now a credit card is required to proceed to the reservation page. We have also implemented an automated telephone call-back which requires that a phone number be entered to receive a call-back with a PIN to verify.
We have also implemented more changes behind-the-scenes to check and verify data.
We didn't want these changes. Our business was growing well and we worked hard to keep customers happy. We wanted a rental process that we, ourselves, would enjoy using; something simple and easy. Unfortunately, some people think that they deserve to take advantage of our rental service, that they are allowed to keep the lenses that we work very, very hard at renting to hundreds of good customers. So, while we spend even more hours each day providing information to police as they methodically build their case to arrest the thieves, we have also needed to spend time implementing changes to our rental process.
We have also taken this time to review customer comments and make some changes to our rentals. We sometimes received comments comparing our rental prices to the rates charged by rental companies in the USA. While this isn't a worthwhile comparison because our countries, populations and economies are very different, we acknowledge what customers take time to write. We've made some changes to our pricing, but have needed to remove weekend rentals to make it work.
We've greatly appreciated the dozens of email messages we've received in support of our efforts to return Lens Lenders to normal business. We never forget that customers are the reason why we do everything that we do, but when people take time to write a few words, it encourages us even more. We're reminded that this incident is only a rock in the road. Our new security improvements will help us avoid thieves while resuming rentals without too much additional hassle for customers.
We know that security deposits are not something our customers want; they're a burden to carry on credit cards, especially between billing cycles. Deposits aren't popular with us, either. We don't want the extra administration of handling them.
The new security measures will require customer to provide credit card information. Previously, we relied on Paypal to process credit card payments and we'll continue to use this process for the security of customers. However, we will also collect credit card information when the rental reservation is made. We will use this as an additional source of indentity verification and as a source of recovery should a rental be stolen. Credit card data will be erased from our database when equipment is safely returned.
We will also implement a new, telephone verification process. When customers make new reservations, they will need to enter their home phone number that that they can be reached at through an automated call. After clicking a button, they will receive a phone call at their home number that will give them a PIN to enter and verify. We recognize that this system won't work for customers working in an office with phone extensions. We're hopeful that customers can simply make reservations from home or use their permanent cell phone number instead.
We hope to have these improvements running shortly.
