A rough ending to an other wise great extended weekend….. Well, let me give you the story as it currently stands.

I was in the market for a DSLR camera. DSLRs are the sorta cameras you get if you’re serious about photography… I had done some research and it looked like.. assuming I could find the right prices, I’d get a Canon EOS 40D…. which I understand is somewhat mid ranged.. not quite entry level.

It used to be, not all that long ago, that you couldn’t even get a DSLR for under $1000… which is why I don’t have one. Currently, if you are going through a reputable dealer.. you might find a Canon EOS 40D for under $1000, but that would without any lenses, and of course you need lenses… indeed you should probably spend more on lenses then on the camera… so…

My camera budget.. or how much I expected to pay was.. around $1,500… If I was under that I was cool.. and indeed the camera I bought was under that…

But we are getting ahead of our selves.. lets start with what made me susceptible to the con. I suppose the first thing is I haven’t been conned like this before… so what do I know? The second thing was.. I had been procrastinating dropping money on the camera, as I’ve been procrastinating spending money on a lot of things… And then, for one reason or another, I decided I needed to rush out and get the camera. There were a number of reasons really.. but my rushing.. well that was a big part of my getting conned.

So if you were to google “Canon EOS 40D” you’ll get a number of paid adds.. some of which will seem rather cheap..  

ok.. you might not even know about Google adds, so let me slow down here a bit. Google works on keywords.. the words you type into Google are keywords. If you want to market on Google, you can pay for keywords.. you bid on them really.. and depending on how much you bid.. well boom, they become the first things you see on a search.. I believe Google labels these as a paid link, or something like that?

Anyway, so you’ll find a really low price on the 40D.. and if you click through you end up on another site.. this other site is a.. what do you call them? A price search.. sites that you can use to search for products based on price… So the price that turns up in the Google add, you find on both the Google, and then Price Search pages.

Now there are legitimate price search sites out there.. but the one I landed on wasn’t one of them. Generally these sites offer user comments and ratings. And this site was no different. But.. if you then click into the details.. you begin to notice that you have 100 or more rankings.. all giving 5 stars? That’s not the way humans are.. indeed many of the reviews looks like they were generated via some sort of bot-ing like thing. Indeed, we were talking about a camera store and one review talked about how great it was buying a computer from them!

I then looked a little further into the search site and found it was a marketing site.. you pay X amount for leads… which they say are very valuable.. have a high click on ROI if you will.. and your performance in there search is based on how much you bid..  now.. being on the top of this search doesn’t really make that much of a difference.. as long as you’re above the fold.. and 90% of the folks going through there are probably going to buy on price… and there’s at most 2 pages of search results anyway.

Anyway, long story short.. if you find your self on a price search site.. dig around a little to see if it passes the sniff test.

So anyway.. I bought my camera on this site.. the one linked to from the price search site.. for the lowest prices.. and they up sold me.. which is to say they conned me into spending more then I originally planned on spending..  A listed price of under $900 became more then $1500.

Now let me stop here and tell you I don’t know how badly I was conned in all this.. and as I said before, I was prepared to spend that much money…  but, is what I got really worth $1500? Did I get any kind of a deal? I couldn’t tell you.. I think I might have despite it all being a bit of a con.

I got.. a Canon EOS 40D, 2 lenses.. which the sales guy informed me were “$1,400 lenses.” I also got lens filters.. a faster 2GB SD card, tripod, carrying case, lens maintenance kit, and um… a fast battery charger. I frankly don’t give a shit about how fast the SD card is.. from what I’ve heard it doesn’t really make that big of a difference.. I’d like a tripod but I’d rather buy it from a store where I can get a feel for it, rather then buying it online.. same goes for a carrying case.. I do want filters..  and I don’t much care about fast charging battery chargers.

So.. if it turns out that the Camera… lets say if you bought just the body.. that was $800.. then, as far as I’m concerned.. if the lenses and filters have a combined value of over $700 I’m happy.. sorta.

So.. as cons go, it could be a lot worse.. and I guess I’ve learned from all this.. but for now I’m just waiting on the camera’s arrival to see what I think of the over all situation.

A day latter: after the Camera came.

So it turns out my camera doesn’t even take SD  Cards! The sales guy spent a lot of time upselling me on that one! I still don’t know bad I was ripped off / conned / whatever.. I’ll have to get around to looking into this a bit more.. 

I’m very unsure if the Lenses are what I’d buy if I was buying.. if I was looking into it enough.. I’ve more or less spent what I was going to spend, so I’ll have to live with these lenses.. my impression is they are very nice lenses.. just not what I would really want. At this point I’m just thankful to have the camera and the lenses!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 5:15 pm and is filed under Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.