Buyer beware: Avoid online scams

Sleazy sales don't have

"If it seems too good to be true, it probably is." 

Who doesn't know this age old adage? Yet who hasn't heard a story of someone being ripped off by an on-line site that promised something they wanted at half price? There are many of those sites on-line for buying cameras and accessories, so how do you know which one's best? 

If you haven't already seen, on the right hand column I have a list of good places to buy on-line. These places have a good reputation for being able to deliver the goods at a good price, and also delivering the goods, period. 

After working in the retail world selling cameras for over 2 years, I can tell you a lot of stories about people getting ripped off through on-line retailers. My favorite is of a man that tried to buy a camera on-line for a price we couldn't match. 

The camera was the Canon EOS 40D, which was around $1,500 new as a kit. This man found the camera kit on-line for around $900, which was somewhere around $400 less than what my company bought it for from Canon. So how did this company do it? Up-selling. The camera was "like new" in box, which probably means if the man bought the camera, he would have gotten a camera, and that might have been all. Memory cards were grossly overpriced; how about $120 for a 512MB compact flash card? My store had fast, name brand 2GB compact flash cards for around $40! Batteries on-line: 3rd party from $160. In store: 3rd party from $50. And the list went on. 

The website I use whenever I see an on-line deal that seems to be too good to be true is ResellerRatings.com. This is a site like Angie's List, but with no fee to join, and for on-line sites. Some of the reviews we read of the site in the above story told of sales people talking some into upgrading to the magnesium-alloy frame as a must. No one must have mentioned to the sales team that the alloy frame was standard! 

There is no reason to get caught off guard as you are buying your camera and lenses. Use the tools at your disposal to make sure the sites you are dealing with are legit. Use the list to the right, use ResellerRatings, and, above all, use common sense!

Finally, you can avoid the whole confusion of finding out if an on-line dealer is legit by buying local. Camera stores like Columbus Camera Group, Cord Camera, and Midwest Photo Exchange are competitively priced, and, if there is a great legit deal on-line, ask the question; they will more than likely make the same deal for you.