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

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Canon HV20

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.

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Canon HV20

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....

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PV-GS120
Rode VM, Shure SM58, AT822, 3 x GS mono lavs
Sony MZ-R70/Sharp MT877 MD, Sony MZ-RH910 HiMD
2 x iRiver IFP-890
Adobe CS3

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?

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PV-GS120
Rode VM, Shure SM58, AT822, 3 x GS mono lavs
Sony MZ-R70/Sharp MT877 MD, Sony MZ-RH910 HiMD
2 x iRiver IFP-890
Adobe CS3

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.

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Canon HV20

I just got my email -- footage shipped!

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Canon HV20

Just got my email too!

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__________________________________________
PV-GS120
Rode VM, Shure SM58, AT822, 3 x GS mono lavs
Sony MZ-R70/Sharp MT877 MD, Sony MZ-RH910 HiMD
2 x iRiver IFP-890
Adobe CS3

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.