The Incoherant Ramblings of a Poetic Compulsive: Consumer Alert: My Digital Camera Purchase Experience

My wife started having contractions on Tuesday, November 22nd. She’s not due until December 14th but it was a good reminder that we need to start preparing for the big day. Bags need to be pre-packed, directions to babysitters, phone numbers, and pre-registration paperwork all need to be figured out, completed and ready to go at a moment’s notice. Since then the contractions have increased, gotten stronger, closer together and become much more frequent. Anyway, that night, we decided it was time to upgrade the memory card in our digital camera. All we have right now is a working 16MB smartmedia card for our Fuji Finepix 6800.

It was a great camera when it came out four years ago: three or four megapixels, optical and digital zoom, macro and movie modes, LCD view finder, etc. And the chassis was designed, in part, by some engineers at Porsche too, which I found to be a neat novelty and I’m sure I paid extra for. But apparently, according to several stores we visited and the rather snooty 19 year old sales clerks usually behind the counter at the massive home electronics conglomerates, smartmedia memory is pretty much on its last leg and as such inventories are very low and what is in stock is usually quite expensive. I was mildly discouraged that I’d chosen a camera that, after only 4 years, the memory required to run it had pretty much gone the way of the buffalo. I was even more agitated at the fact that I was pretty sure my best move was to purchase a new camera. The guy at Best Buys tried to get me to walk out with one that night. CompUSA tried even harder. Coincidentally, this is a random side note, I’m pretty sure I’ll never shop at CompUSA again if I can help it. Just about every piece of merchandise I saw there only displayed a price tag of what the will cost after 2 or 3 rebates, one of which inevitably involved a one-year subscription to AOL. But that’s neither here nor there.

So I decided I wasn’t going to invest hundreds of dollars into something without doing some research first. I spent most of that evening looking up information on brands, features, etc. I found a very helpful site called Digital Camera HQ. They were most helpful in deciphering what I wanted in a camera, the advantages and disadvantages of the different options, etc. I decided I wanted a good, reliable name brand. Preferably Canon if I could afford it. And I decided I did not need 7 or 8 megapixels. My wife and I figured we could get by on 4, but 5 would give us some room for cropping if necessary. And we decided rather than a large footprint that requires its own carrying case and is awkward to carry around, we wanted a small, compact “point-and-shoot” camera that would fit in a purse, front seat console, or even a large coat pocket. We figure we’re more apt to catch those precious moments if bringing the camera along isn’t a burden. After a long series of evaluations and a detailed matrix of camera needs and features, I decided on the Canon PowerShot SD450.

Pretty happy with my choice and encouraged by a plethora of positive user reviews, I went about finding one. I was hoping to find it for under $300, as Froogle searches were showing that my camera could be had for as little as $250. But after looking up all the local stores that carry them, I found that $350 was the going price for nearly every one of them. Wal-Mart was the cheapest at $320 and my local Wal-Marts didn’t have any in their inventories in stock. Charity and I wanted to get it as soon as possible because the contractions weren’t slowing down and we could go into labor any time and to do so without a camera…well that’s apparently just unacceptable. So she suggested that if it’s so much cheaper through some online vendors, why don’t we see if purchasing it through them and having it shipped “next day air” was cheaper total than $350. So I went back to Froogle…where I discovered a new company to put on my NEVER EVER USE THESE COMPANIES AGAIN list.

Best Price Cameras seemingly offered the lowest price on the camera that I wanted, as you can see from the picture. I attempted to make the purchase on Wednesday night. Attempted being the key word. And attempted, and attempted and attempted. I was a little surprised that a company whose only source of sales was through their website would have such a flakey online ordering process. Broken links at every click. Every time I tried to submit information for the order the session failed, and I’d have to reestablish my secure connection, re-fill in all my information, credit card numbers, etc. This happened at least 5 times before it finally went through (and no, it was not my Internet connection failing because between each failure on the site I would check it against other sites just to ensure my connectivity was not the culprit). It did eventually go through, but I was quite concerned by then that my card might be charged multiple times, so I sent an email to their handy-dandy customer service email address just to verify the order was processed, and only one time. Three hours later I received confirmation of my order and it became clear to me at that time that only the one order that made it through was in fact processed. Shipping it next day air cost about $36, which is what I expected, however I was disappointed to see that adding a 3 ounce 128MB SD memory card would bump the shipping up to over $70, so I decided to forego the memory card (I found one on eBay for $7 plus $9 to ship it, brand new still in its box). Two days later I received an email from Best Price Cameras in response to my initial inquiry about the order processing problems. All it said was please call the customer service 1-800 hotline. Struck me as odd that they’d have a customer service email process set up if all it did was reply back for customers to call the service hotline. Confident that only one order was submitted and processed, I decided against calling them for further verification.

Later that day (Friday) I received yet another email from somebody at Best Price Cameras. A sales rep. The email came at 2:19pm and it stated that before my order could be completed and shipped that the gentleman needed to “confirm my telephone number” and I needed to call him directly and do so before 3pm my time, which gave me a 40 minute window to call him or the order couldn’t be processed until the next business day. I of course didn’t get off from work until 3:30pm that day. So I was needless to say, very disappointed by that incident.

I called them first thing on Sunday morning (apparently Saturday’s not a business day but Sunday is at Best Price Cameras) and the message still stated I should call back during business hours a full half-hour after their own message said they’d be open. I did eventually get a hold of the guy that wanted to “confirm” my telephone number. Which I thought might be a problem since I did it from my cell phone while I was on the road for work purposes and it wasn’t the number I put on the order. But it turned out to be a non-issue. The guy never asked for my telephone number at all. What he did ask me, in the same “I hate my job” tone that I got at Best Buys, is what kind of battery and battery charger I would like my camera shipped with as well as what kind of warranty (if any) I’d like. Now I was a little surprised by this line of questioning because the website says right on the SD450 page, “Everything we sell is brand new and factory fresh” and the Canon website states what accessories the camera ships with in the box and a battery as well as a charger are included. Best Price Camera’s SD450 page also states “Everything we sell comes with a full US Warranty”. Now, in the version of English that I speak the phraseology, “comes with a warranty” means it’s included in the price. So now I'm getting a little upset that it was not included and that accessories that came in the box according to Canon were costing me extra and asked, in a most reluctant tone, what the price for a battery, charger and warranty was. He quoted me $42 dollars and said it would bump my shipping up too. Yeah, that “next day air” that still hadn’t left the warehouse yet was going up and now…I was looking at paying quite a bit more than $350 for the same camera at a local electronics store and had I gone that route I’d have a camera in my hand and my wife (contractions now every hour) would have one less thing to worry about. So yeah, I let him know I was more than a little ticked off and that's when he decided to be a “nice guy” and cut me a deal, in so much as if I get the 2-hour battery, instead of the 1-hour he’d keep the original shipping price.

Gee thanks.

The camera, at the absolute earliest will be here tomorrow, one full week after I placed the order. The baby’s due any day now. Best Price Cameras, in my opinion epitomizes everything that my mom is scared of about buying merchandise online. It was one of the worst online vendor experience I’ve ever had, and I’ve done a lot of online purchasing throughout the years. But lesson learned: I’ll never just go with the lowest price in a Froogle search again.

Bazooka-Joe made it so at 2:56 PM

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Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Consumer Alert: My Digital Camera Purchase Experience

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