Lenstag

[timhood]

An interesting idea and I wish you the best of luck.

But... Its always great to read someone complementing you and then following it up with a "but". ;D

But it does sound a little like a solution looking for a problem.

Thanks for writing & I appreciate your candor. Sorry for the delay. I had to wait until I was done with my day job before replying.

Such is the problem with Lenstag. This is an idea that requires much more manpower and capital than one guy working off-hours after his day job can give. It's the same experience I had when I asked for help with a trivial issue: the web site provides no way to mark an item as not stolen once it's been marked as stolen. Thus, should one recover their gear, now Lenstag shows it's stolen and if anyone actually checked the site before trying to purchase the gear when I later try to sell it, people will think *I* stole it. If Lenstag were actually used that much, this could devalue my own rightfully-owned product.

I contacted Mr. Lenstag about this issue and didn't receive a reply for several months, even after multiple attempts to reach him. Finally, I got a "sorry for the delay" response with a promise to help, but multiple further contacts over several more months were fruitless.

So, if you believe the world is ready to work hard to find this semi-obscure site and see if your stolen gear is on the list (assuming the request for product serial numbers is made and honored), and if you believe that some perfect storm chain of events will happen that will lead to your gear actually getting recovered, good luck to you.

Honestly, this idea would be better sold to an investor with real funding that would take this beyond a camera gear niche site and turn it into a valuable property registration, theft prevention and search site. Let people put up all manner of valuable items--electronics, computer gear, cell phones, etc. Then it could hit "critical mass" much sooner. But as of now, it looks like the Lenstag site owner has basically given up on putting in the effort, realizing it's been a money-losing proposition.