Free stock footage of 25 US city skylines for FinalCut

This find was originally posted on FreshDV.com yesterday and is still available:

FootageFirm is giving away footage of 25 major city skylines to the first 500 takers. It will cost you just $8.50 shipping and handling.

“The DVD contains skylines of 25 different US Cities, each 30-50 seconds in length, and the perfect addition to a stock footage library. The clips are in DV AVI format, 29.97fps, 720×480. The bonus high definition clip of the NYC skyline is 29.97fps, 1920×1080, Photo-JPEG QuickTime format.”

Cities include Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Washington DC, Detroit, Ft. Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Houston, Indianapolis, Tucson, Las Vegas, Miami, New York City, Oahu, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and Seattle.

To request your free DVD, go to http://www.footagefirm.com/footage/freeskylines.htm

I ordered one, my first example of stock footage to integrate into my work. Thanks

Great stuff, thanks...

Anybody get theirs yet? I ordered on June 3 and received a confirmation email with an order number. Since then, nothing. No shipping info, no estimated shipping date... nothing.

They have a toll-free number for information and I will call it next Monday if I haven't heard anything by then (2 weeks), but I'm not in a rush to get the disc and I realize they're giving it away for cheap so I don't want to hassle them before then.

Just curious if anyone who ordered received anything beyond an order confirmation.

It was about a week ago that he said it would be a couple of weeks before our DVD ships. You must not have gotten the second email. I think were OK. Probably a delay so they could do them in one shipment rather that a lot of different shipments on more days. He spoke to the delay.

I didn't get any second email. I tried calling Friday and there was nobody there to take the call. I left a message and asked for a call back. Nothing.

I called again this morning and still nobody answers the phone.

My credit card statement arrived today with the $8.50 charge on it and I have nothing to show for it. Not even an estimated shipping date?

I think this is a scam.

A little research shows that the email address jholland@dynamichorizon.net is the administrative contact for the footagefirm.com domain.

This is troubling because if it's the same guy as joeholland who posted this "find", then that means he didn't find it on FreshDV at all. He astroturfed the deal here knowing full well the nature of his spam.

If I don't hear back from footage-scam in 30 minutes I'm going to call my credit card company and dispute the charge.

If I'm wrong I will gladly retract what I have said and apologize. I think I'm right, and this is a scam.

I ordered on Friday, so naturally I'm very interested in where this goes....

Notice how footagefirm's website offers you no way to track your orders.

They don't give an estimated shipping date when you order, nor do they have any online policy that states what that would be. I spoke to a friend of mine who is an attorney (this is not legal advice) who said in the abscence of a specific shipping date a vendor has 30 days to ship the merchandise.

I called the number for 2co listed on my cc statement. They are going to attempt to contact footagefirm and said I should hear from somebody in a day or 2. If not, I was instructed to call 2co back.

I reviewed 2co's website and their policies seem fairly strict. The way I read it, their vendor agreement says they expect vendors to keep an adequate supply of merchandise on hand, and no vendor may submit sales information to them for billing purposes unless the merchandise has actually been shipped.

My cc has been billed. Nothing has shipped.

This may be just a mixup. Then again, maybe not. In any case I will follow up on this and I'm really glad right now the total amount involved is less than 10 bucks.

Any developments on this front?

I'm giving it till the end of next week or even the following week. No use getting excited we knew we were taking a chance to begin with. I think they will probably come. Were not going to gain anything by jumping the gun anyway.

I just got my email -- footage shipped!

Just got my email too!

I got one too dated June 23 (last Saturday). Are they sending them Pony Express?

They charged my CC immediately and then took 3 weeks to ship. Next Tuesday will be 30 days since I placed my order.

Even if it shows up, there was just way too much hassle with this. I never send spammers money for any reason. If I had researched first and found out Joel Holland was actually the owner of Footage Firm, I would have passed on this great "free offer".

Spammers lie.

Nothing today either and UPS doesn't deliver on weekends. Assuming they shipped via UPS, which could be an invalid assumption given the complete lack of details in the "the DVD is in the mail" message that came a week ago.

I am on the beaten path and standard UPS ground 3-5 day shipping has never taken longer than 5 days to arrive from anywhere in the US to my front door. Maybe it didn't ship UPS. It's possible the mailman could bring it with tomorrow's mail. Who knows? I sure don't. The only thing I know is he got my money 3 weeks ago.

1. He came here and pretended to have found a deal somewhere else.
2. He charged my CC for shipping 3 weeks before he actually shipped it.
3. He sent email saying the DVD was shipped but doesn't say how he shipped it or give a delivery estimate.

Add those up and it spells Sleazy with a capital S.

If it doesn't arrive by Tuesday morning I'm going to give 2co one more call, and unless I have a firm delivery date by Wednesday AM I'm calling my CC company to dispute the charge.

I think it's good that you are going to dispute the charge if we don't get our DVD. The time frames here and the emails I don't think at this point are all that suspect though. I think you jumped the gun and made everything look rotten right from the beginning. Nobody likes to get took but in the same breath a few weeks of lag time in a deal like this and reasonable delays making for a lot of accusations just sours what is probably a straight up OK deal that is/was a promotion in the first place to spread it's name around a little and create some goodwill and maybe get some future business from this form of advertising. I can't imagine 30 days to get our order to us as being thought of this way. I think were pretty lucky to have gotten in on this. I'm sure a lot of the skeptics will wish they had been less cautious and gotten one themselves.

THE DVD HAS ARRIVED

It came in the late mail yesterday.

So, Joel Holland and footage firm are NOT scammers and the free skylines promo DVD was LEGIT.

I hereby recant any and all accusations of wrongdoing, expressed or implied, against FootageFirm and/or Joel Holland. Except for the spamming of this board, which Joel clearly did. Unethical, perhaps, but not a crime.

The postmark was June 28 (Boston), this past Thursday, whereas the email I received last Saturday, June 23, said it had already shipped. The postage on the cardboard DVD sleeve was 58 cents.

This offer should have and could have been handled in a more professional manner. Needless to say, I don't plan on doing any business with them in the future.

I think you should be worried about your private details, cc numbere et al.

Well, it's July 14th and my order hasn't arrived yet. I got the email saying it shipped on June 23rd, too. I wonder if we all got the same 4 digit confirmation number.

I've sent email and made two polite phone calls to Footage Firm. No response at all in over a week. It sure would be nice to hear at least something. I would be understanding if he was communicative and let us know that he was having supply problems, or whatever.

This looks like he bit of WAY more than he could chew and the backlash to his silence and failure to deliver is certainly damaging his reputation.

Still nothing. I contacted 2CO and they sent an email to him. I got an email a day later from Joel saying he'd reship. Now, 9 days afterward, still no DVD. I was charged over 2 months ago for something I haven't received. This is totally unacceptable. Thankfully it wasn't a huge charge, but that's no excuse for such poor customer service.

I guess I'll call 2CO once more and then my CC company to dispute the charge.

August 1st, nothing from Footage Firm. He promised to reship two weeks ago. Nothing. I finally called 2CO and complained. They sent a refund request to him almost a week ago. Nothing.

Stay away from Footage Firm. They're at best an unscrupulous/unresponsive company. They've committed fraud in my case, charging my CC without having the item in stock or shipping it. I was charged on May 25th and on August 1st have no product or my requested refund.

STAY AWAY FROM FOOTAGE FIRM!