The new flexfoto.se — what we changed

We have rebuilt flexfoto.se from the ground up — not a new colour on the buttons, a new site. Same equipment, same person, same agreement. But booking works differently, prices are visible before you commit, and shipping is calculated a new way. Here is everything you will notice.

Why we rebuilt it

Flexfoto outgrew its first site. It was built quickly to get going and it did its job for three years — but a lot of how it worked was compromises we never chose, only inherited. That a rental cannot start on a Monday, for instance, is a rule that stays, because it follows from how PostNord’s dispatch runs. But the old site just said no without explaining why. Now the calendar tells you why a day cannot be picked.

When we finally sat down to fix one thing like that, it turned out to be tied to ten others. So we rebuilt the whole thing instead.

The goal was simple: you should be able to see what a rental actually costs and how it works, before you book it.

1. You choose the arrival day and the return day

This is the most visible change.

Before, you picked a first rental day, and we delivered "no later than the day before". You did not know which day the parcel would turn up, only that it would be there before the rental started — and the return fell the day after the last rental day, handed in by 09:00 in the morning.

Now the calendar asks for two dates, and both are yours:

• Arrival day — the day the equipment is delivered to you.
• Return day — the day you hand the parcel in to PostNord, by 18:00.

The rental period is the days in between, both included. Arrival Tuesday and return Thursday is three rental days. You do not pay for the days in transit: we ship the day before your arrival day, and the journey home happens after your return day.

Which days you can pick. The arrival day is a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. We ship the day before, and since PostNord neither collects nor delivers at weekends or on public holidays, the parcel cannot be delivered on a Monday, Saturday or Sunday — nor on the day after a public holiday. If you need the equipment on a Monday, book from the Friday. The price difference is small, and the price ladder on the product page shows exactly what the extra days cost.

The return day can be any day except Saturday. Sundays and public holidays are fine — service points take parcels then too. Saturday is the one exception, and only because a parcel handed in on a Saturday does not start moving until Monday anyway: that deadline would have meant nothing. The parcel must be handed over by 18:00 on the return day.

The calendar also works out Swedish public holidays by itself, including the moveable ones around Easter and Whitsun, and it tells you which kind of day is greyed out — a public holiday, equipment already booked, or too close in time. It used to be a hand-written list somebody had to maintain every year, and which was therefore wrong now and then.

If the delivery is delayed on its way to you we get in touch as soon as we can, and you get the rental reduced for the time you could not use the equipment (terms § 17).

2. Nobody else can book the same camera while you are signing

This is the most important change, and it does not show up in a single screenshot.

Most things in our catalogue exist in a single copy. On the old site you paid first, and signing the rental agreement came afterwards — sometimes days afterwards, with reminders in between. For that whole time nothing was holding the equipment for you. Two people could pay for the same lens on the same days without either of them finding out until we called.

The order is now reversed. When you pick your dates and start signing with BankID, the equipment is held for you immediately. Then you sign, and then you pay. The order does not exist until it is paid — and if you stop halfway, the equipment is released back to other customers by itself after a while. You do not have to tell us, and you are not charged for something you did not finish.

It sounds like a technical detail. In practice it is the difference between hoping the camera is still there when you are done and knowing that it is.

And if something does go wrong after the card is charged — the equipment turns out to be gone, the payment sticks halfway — it is handled automatically, with a refund, rather than becoming a support case you have to chase.

3. The price ladder — see what a longer rental costs

This is the one we are happiest about.

Flexfoto has always had a very generous price curve over time: the longer you rent, the less each day costs. A week costs about the same as a day and a half. A month is nowhere near thirty days.

The problem was that nobody saw it. It sat in a table at the bottom of the product page, and the price at the top showed the day-one rate — the most expensive day a product ever has. We showed our worst price first and our best one in a footnote.

Now the price ladder is on every product page. It draws the daily rate as a scale: one row per rental length, where the bar length is what a day costs compared to day one. The cheapest daily rate is marked.

An example: the Canon RF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM costs 1,364 SEK for one day. Rent it for a week and the whole week costs 1,773 SEK — like 1.3 days. Rent it for two weeks and the daily rate lands at 161 SEK. That is 88 % below day one — and it is the kind of thing you have to see to believe.

We also changed the prices shown everywhere else:

• Product cards and the product page now lead with the weekly price and what a day actually costs, instead of the day-one rate.
• In the cart each line shows the daily rate for your booking, not the list price. Rent for nine days and you see the nine-day rate per day.
• The payment options show the amount in kronor next to the percentage. "+5 %" says nothing until you know it is 89 SEK on the week in the example above.

The price ladder is on the front page too, on whatever is rented most right now.

4. Prices are set against what the equipment costs new

During July we went through the whole catalogue and found out what each item actually costs to buy new in Sweden today. Then we set the daily rates as a share of that, with different bands for accessories, mid-range, system cameras and professional glass.

It is the only rule that makes sense from the customer’s side: two equivalent lenses should not cost different amounts because one of them happened to be priced on a Tuesday two years ago. And that is exactly what had happened — two 35 mm lenses were 26 % apart and nobody could say why.

At the same time we introduced a ceiling: a rental never costs more than 50 % of what the equipment costs new. No such ceiling existed before, and it showed. A Sony NP-FZ100 battery costs 1,090 SEK to buy. A month’s rental cost almost as much. It now costs 545 SEK — and the ceiling applies to every product in the catalogue, not just the accessories.

Honestly about the rest: in the same pass we adjusted the daily rates up by a few per cent generally, and down on a couple of accessories that were too expensive. The reason for the rise is shipping, and we explain that in the next section.

5. Shipping is five fixed prices now

On the old site shipping was a rule of thumb. In practice that meant ten different shipping names at nine different prices, with no rule you could see before you reached checkout. And it did not cover what PostNord invoices us — especially not for the larger parcels.

Shipping is now five fixed prices, and which one you pay is decided by how big the shipment is. The ladder starts at 195 SEK once the new, smaller cartons are in place — we are not quite there yet. The price is the same wherever in Sweden you live — we charge nothing extra for distance. You see the price for each delivery option before you choose, and the cheapest is pre-selected.

Two more things, easy to miss:

• Shipping is never more than half the rental. If the bill comes out higher, we cover the difference.
• Return shipping is included, and home collection is included for everyone — whatever you chose for the delivery. You decide whether to drop the parcel at a service point or book a collection at your door.

We make nothing on shipping. All five price levels sit below what PostNord invoices us for the same shipment. Shipping is not a revenue line here, and part of the difference is carried in the rental price instead — that is the adjustment mentioned above.

And for anyone wondering why it still costs more than ordinary online-shop delivery, the short answer is this:

• Two journeys, not one. The equipment has to come back, so every rental is two shipments.
• Proper packaging. Everything travels in a protective hard case, not in a bag. PostNord charges for the greater of the parcel’s actual weight and its volumetric weight, and a hard case is light but bulky — so it is usually the size and not the weight that decides.
• Insured to replacement value, both ways. If a 40,000 SEK lens is damaged while PostNord has it, the insurance covers what a new one costs, not you.
• Strict identity checks. Only you — the same person who signed the rental agreement — can collect the parcel.
• Nordic Swan certified and climate-compensated transport.

A tip that follows from this: shipping is the same whether you rent for three days or three weeks. The longer the rental, the smaller the share of the bill it is.

6. You choose where the parcel goes — and that is what gets booked

The delivery options at checkout are now PostNord’s real options for your postcode: home delivery, a service point, a parcel locker or your letterbox. Each option carries its own estimated arrival day, distance from your address and opening hours — so the choice is made on real information rather than a guess.

And the one you pick is the one that gets booked. Home delivery is 75 SEK more per parcel than a service point, and it stands as its own price in the list instead of appearing later.

There is a letter in the box. It carries a QR code to the return booking, your order number, the day the parcel has to be handed in by, and the fact that you have 24 hours to tell us if anything is damaged when you open it. That last part protects you as much as it protects us.

The return is booked from the start, at the same time as the outbound leg — so it does not need ordering and there is no support ticket to send. Before the return day you get a reminder by both email and SMS.

Tracking also moves your order by itself: sent, at the service point, with you, on its way back. Nobody has to update anything by hand.

7. Finding the right equipment is easier

Search understands what you mean. The old search matched letter by letter in the product name, which meant it often returned nothing for perfectly reasonable searches. Type "objektiv" and you got nothing, even though we have 24 of them. Now "R5II" finds a Canon EOS R5 Mark II, and if you search for a brand we do not carry — say "Sigma 35mm" — you get our equivalent lenses and an honest answer, instead of an empty page.

The filters are rebuilt. The shop had six dropdowns with 165 options between them, for 66 products. Now you start with What are you looking for? — cameras, lenses, tripods, lighting, storage, accessories — and can then filter by Suitable for (weddings, portraits, astro, travel …), mount, brand and price range. The options shown are the ones that actually exist in what you are looking at, not an alphabetical list of everything in the database.

You can start with the dates. Fill in arrival and return straight in the shop and you only see what is genuinely free for your whole period. That is the fastest route when the dates are the fixed part.

On the product page you will find the article number, a real specification table, What is included, and Compatible with — accessories that actually fit that product, rather than competing camera bodies, which the old site could end up showing.

If everything is out for your week, you can ask to be told. We watch one product for one period and get in touch once if it frees up. It expires by itself once the period has passed, and it promises nothing — it says "if", not "when".

And if you are wondering about a specific product, you can ask on the product page itself. We answer there, so the next person sees the answer too.

8. Two new ways in, if you do not know what to pick

"What should I rent?" is three questions — what you are photographing, how much you need, and which system you already have — and then a concrete suggestion from what we actually have on the shelf right now. No login, no email address. If nothing fits, it says so instead of guessing.

Packages are ready-made kits for a specific job: weddings, events, landscape, newborn, portrait, travel, vlogging, wildlife. Each package has a daily price and a list of exactly which products are in it, with current stock — so you can see what you get before you book, and a package cannot be booked if a lens inside it is already out.

Both live in the menu under Rent equipment, and both lead to ordinary product pages — they are not separate ranges.

9. Checkout tells you what is happening

The old checkout was seven identical boxes in a long column, and you found out what you had ordered on the confirmation page.

Now:

• You can see where you are — Cart, Details, BankID, Payment, Done. Having the BankID signing written into the steps matters: it is the step people do not expect.
• Your booking stays in the margin the whole way — image, product, quantity, dates, number of days, and a link back to the cart.
• The fields have real labels, and if something is wrong the error appears under the field it belongs to, as soon as you leave it.
• You can change the dates from the cart. There used to be exactly one way to change the period: empty the cart and start again. Now you change the dates in place, and if something in the cart is not free for the new period you are told which.
• The delivery options carry prices, and the cheapest is pre-selected.
• The credit check is spelled out before you sign. In most cases we run a simple check through Creditsafe — it does not show up at UC and does not affect your ability to borrow. You get a message from us as soon as everything is approved, and if we have to decline we refund the whole amount immediately. That used to be in the terms only, which is the wrong order to put surprises in.

You pay when you want to. Now, or five working days before the rental starts, or after the equipment is back — what each option costs is written out in kronor side by side. You pay by card, Swish, Apple Pay or Klarna.

And as before: no deposit. You sign the rental agreement with BankID instead.

10. Your account

The account pages are rebuilt from scratch.

You log in with a one-time code sent to your email. No password to invent, none to forget.

Once you are in you can see:

• All your rentals, with status, dates, what was included and the total.
• Tracking — a direct link to the parcel.
• The return label and collection — the links are on the order, so you do not have to dig through old email.
• Your receipt for every paid order, and an invoice for companies. Download whenever — the bookkeeping can happen months later.
• The signed rental agreement, downloadable forever.
• "Rent the same again" — rebuilds an earlier order as a new cart at today’s prices, tells you what is no longer available and why, and asks for new dates rather than silently reusing the old ones.
• Change or cancel — period, products, delivery or cancellation, as a request we answer, rather than a free-text email that can get lost.
• Pay now, if you chose to pay later and the payment is waiting.
• Refer a friend: 200 SEK each. Your friend gets 200 SEK off through your referral code, which sits on your account page — and once their rental is complete, you get your own 200 SEK discount code.

If you would rather not log in, you can still look up an order with the order number and email address. That view deliberately shows less than the signed-in one.

11. You hear from us the whole way

A rental has four moments where you want to hear something: when the order is taken, when the parcel is on its way, when you have handed it back, and when we have checked that everything is in order. All four now have a message.

The last two above all. Handing 40,000 SEK of equipment to a courier and then hearing nothing for several days is the most uncomfortable part of the whole rental. You now get a confirmation the same day that we can see the parcel has been handed in, and a message once we have checked it and everything is closed — or, if something is still unpaid, exactly what is coming and when.

The delivery SMS carries the tracking link again. Anyone who has had a text about a parcel with no way to see where it is knows why.

You never get the same message twice. Every send is tied to its order, so a job that runs again does not tell you a second time that your equipment has shipped.

And Hugo is in the chat. It reads the same calendar, the same stock and the same pricing rules as the site itself rather than guessing — so an answer about what something costs or when it is free is the same answer checkout would give. It cannot promise you a copy, give a discount, change an order or see anybody else’s details. If the question is bigger than that, it is still us who answer.

12. Renting as a company

Company is no longer a price list next to the ordinary one. Switch to Business and the whole site recalculates to prices excluding VAT — product page, cart, checkout and receipt, all the way through, instead of VAT appearing as a line at the end.

• Reverse charge happens automatically for EU companies with a valid VAT number outside Sweden.
• The company registration number is checked as you type, so a mistyped digit is caught in the form.
• Invoice remains as a payment method — pay after the rental, exactly as before.
• The credit check is not a gate for paid orders. If you have already paid, the check runs in parallel — the payment is taken and the equipment is insured. If you choose invoicing, we run the check before the equipment ships, so book in good time.
• Quotes for jobs that do not fit in a cart — bigger productions, longer periods, equipment we do not keep on the shelf.

13. Your details

The personal identity number you identify yourself with is encrypted where it is stored. The signed agreement sits in a closed store rather than out on the open web, and is downloadable by you from your account.

We have also written down how long we keep things, and the code follows it: customer details are minimised three years after your last rental, and the accounting record is kept the seven years the law requires. The newsletter is double opt-in, unsubscribes in one click, and arrives at most once a month.

14. Two things that got worse

An honest list is worth more than a long one:

• Large parcels cost more to ship than before. The most common charge is lower than before — 350 SEK on the old site, 295 SEK on the new ladder. But the largest shipments sat below what PostNord invoices us for two journeys, and they have gone up. If you rent a big telephoto lens, you will notice.
• Reviews and product questions start empty. The features are there, but they are new, so there is nothing in them yet. If you have rented from us, you are very welcome to be first — and if you want to show what you did with the equipment, we would love the pictures.

15. Faster, on a phone — and in English

The front page was 579 kB of raw HTML and loaded 85 scripts. It is now 122 kB and 13. The product page went the same way. Images are sent at the size they are actually displayed rather than at full resolution, which shows up most on a phone and on a bad connection.

We have gone through the site at every width from 375 pixels to 1440, in two different browser engines, so nothing ends up off-screen on a phone. Everything is reachable by keyboard, and the contrast in the small text is raised so it can be read.

And the whole site is now in English — product copy, terms and help articles, not just the menus. An English page has a real address, so it can be linked and shared.

16. Insurance and terms, in plain language

• All-risk cover is included in every rental within Sweden — accidents, water damage, theft and transport damage for the whole rental period. If the equipment is going abroad it is still covered, for a supplement that depends on the region.
• If the insurance covers the event you pay 1,500 SEK — never more. That used to be written as a fixed cost, which sounded like a ceiling when it was a floor. It is now a ceiling, and it says what it does not cover: theft requires a police report, otherwise the insurance pays nothing.
• Sealed backup is still there — backup equipment that travels sealed costs half price, and you only pay the half as long as the seal is unbroken when it comes back. Break it and full rental is charged plus 100 SEK handling.
• The terms page is rendered from the same source as the agreement you sign. The public page and the contract therefore cannot say different things, which they very much could before. The same goes for the FAQ: late fees, seals and shipping are computed in one place and shown in three.

17. What has stayed the same

Quite a lot, deliberately:

• The same equipment and the same range.
• The same agreement, signed with BankID — and still no deposit.
• All-risk cover included in every rental within Sweden.
• Return shipping included, and home collection included whichever way you chose to receive the delivery.
• Your earlier orders are still there, and the order numbers are unchanged.
• The same person answers the chat. It is still us.

Your old links work too — bookmarks, links in old emails and Google results all lead to the right place.

Found something wrong?

A brand-new site always has a couple of things that do not sit quite right in the first week. If you see something odd — a price that looks wrong, a missing image, a date you cannot pick that you should be able to — get in touch in the chat or on the contact page. We will fix it quickly, and we are genuinely glad of every report.

Thank you for renting from us.

/ Jonathan, Flexfoto