Simon
Many thanks for the constructive criticism on our DVDs, you are of course entitled to you view, but please allow me as a director in 214fells to respond.
The current content of our DVD range is the Echoes series. These DVDs come in at around 25 mins to 35 mins long and are photographic dvd movies with sound track and information screens included. We do not pretend or indeed claim that our DVDs are longer than this and they are very clearly marked with both content and run time.
This current series is not meant to be in competition with the hill walks on video range as they are a different product completly, rather ours are aimed at providing a snapshot of individual areas within Lakeland.
We use and indeed commission, hundreds of photographs for each title and we then use a tiny amount of these to produce the final product. They sell very well throughout the year both online and in outlets and we have have hundreds of very happy customers and to date if we include yours only 2 complaints. The other one coming about as the product was miss sold by a retailer as something it wasn't and not by us directly, although we resolved the issue ourselves at our own expense.
As Jon said in his piece (thanks for that by the way Jon :) ) our product is aimed at the older market rather than the trail segment of the outdoors world. It is a snapshot, a digital postcard and a memory of a lakeland area , its not meant to be a striding edge documentary or indeed a guide to fell walks ( although we have both of those in production for release later this year )
We are happy to receive comment and indeed if warranted, complaints about the DVDs , however, I don't accept your points, simply because the series is not trying to pretend to be something it is not.
The style and content may not be to your liking and that is fair enough. however at a tenner with postage included they come in reasonably priced and clearly labeled, and many , indeed a majority of our customers are repeat ones. We already have a waiting list of over one hundred customers who having brought the Wasdale or Eskdale titles have pre ordered a copy of the Coniston one which is due for release in Jan 2007.
You can see samples of exactly what the dvds are on the website, and we are happy to refund anyone who buys anything off our website and isn't happy with it.
Block busters our DVDs are not, but good quality , well priced snapshots of lakeland aereas they are. I will leave you with an email we received today and which is typical of the feedback we get :
Dear Guy
Many thanks for your beautiful dvds which were a present for my father. It was his 80th birthday and as he has always been a keen walker of the Lake district and can no longer walk or visit the lakes I thought they were appropriate.
They brought back so many memories he cried as he had thought he would never see the fells again.
I look forward to your Coniston dvd which is his belated Christmas present and hope you will be making many more.
Many thanks
