Hello everyone, I am new to this board so I am looking forward to posting and reading.
I just placed my order a few hours ago and here and as with all my purchases, I researched every aspect of the deal with meticulously. Here is information you guys might find useful.
1) Camera World is located in Oregon. This is important since it is a well known fact that most of the shady digital camera sites that offer rediculously low prices are out of Brooklyn, New York SPECIFICALLY. You can read all the rating sites you want. I even go as far as reading newsgroup archives.
2) They are rated a 5.7 out of 7.0 scale on
www.resellerratings.com. Most companies that I've dealt with before have gotten like 4's and they still turn out fine. 5.7 is excellent in my book.
3) The cameras has gotten C reviews from every place I've see. Meaning 5/10 at CNET. 60% at ZDNET. That's pretty bad, but that is considering it's a $1099.95 MSRP camera and comes with only 8MB Smartmedia. They are pitting it against the Nikon 990, Olympus C-3030Z etc. I am in digital camera mode because I have spent the last two days with a dozen web browser windows open researching this topic specifically.
4) The best deal for the two things you all should buy are at Onvia.com. There are currently NO coupons that work but they have free shipping. In contrast, Buy.com will give you a slightly better deal ($1-2) but after tax (at least for CA residents) and basic shipping (~5.75) it turns out to be quite a bit more. Did I mention that is even after using the $30 off $150 coupon.
The products I am referring to is San Disk Smartmedia 64MB Card and San Disk ImageMate Smartmedia USB Reader. Total shipped is $152.70.
The reason you want a reader is because transferring via USB drains the batteries big time. I haven't read anywhere that a second battery is necessary, however JVC does use a proprietary format which greatly upsets me. That means you cannot just pop in AA akalines with you don't want to recharge.
I also did NOT receive a confirmation email. This leads me to suspect possible digital camera scam techniques. There are about 5 that are extremely prevelent and common in e-commerce but I will explain a couple that are possible in this case.
1) Incredibly cheap price, charges credit card, product not in stock, wait weeks to months or cancel order for a fee.
2) Low price, but they make up for it by pushing VERY aggressively for you to buy accesories (generally with a 100% markup)
Goodluck everyone and I hope to see some good results. If not, I'll get some lawyers involved.