Still no acceptable camera replacement. It turns out that if an Amazon third-party seller doesn't feel like responding to any of your messages, and doesn't provide Amazon with tracking information for their package, there's not really any way to find out if they actually have the product they're offering, or whether it's been shipped, or whether it might be shipped in the future. And you can't exactly cancel an order either, because both parties apparently have to agree to cancel. If your seller just declines to respond to all communication on all topics, it seems they can hold an order open indefinitely.
(Amazon claims to have spoken to them on my behalf, but I'm basically positive that Amazon just sent the seller a message which will be ignored, as all the messages I've sent them have been ignored. And although I've been assured that the whole thing will be over by next Monday, there have already been multiple points in this story where Amazon's solution was to message the seller and wait two business days for a response, and then no response happened so there was no resolution.)
I've had good third-party Amazon transactions before (mostly books), but it's going to be a very, very long time before I ever try this again.
In the meantime, I don't know what to do. I have made a little progress on the Canon color balance problem, but it's still right on the edge of what I can realistically afford, and it isn't producing photos of the desired accuracy even with the progress, so I'm inclined to want to return it. And by the time you read this, the deadline to return the Canon will only be 7 or 8 days away. So now we're on Plan D. I also have Plans E, F, and G, but none of us will like Plans F or G.1
PROTIP: It would probably have saved me a lot of grief if I'd looked more closely at the seller's profile, and/or tried to contact them before placing my order. Though they had a high satisfaction rating (94% overall, out of 165 ratings) compared to the other sellers offering the same camera, and a lot of the reviews specifically praised the speed with which items shipped (part of the reason why I chose them in the first place, and paid extra for "expedited shipping on top of that), 164 of those 165 ratings happened in or before October 2015:
Which makes me think I was dealing with a zombie account: still technically active on Amazon, but no longer actually filling orders, checking e-mails, etc.
-
Plan B: expensive Canon with bad color reproduction.
Plan C: third-party Amazon seller to exactly replace the Olympus that just died.
Plan D: used Fuji, offered by a blog reader some time ago but postponed in hopes that the Olympus was going to work out.
Plan E: cheaper Canon from a local, non-chain business which was, itself, more money than I had intended to spend, and that I disliked the first time I saw it, but which is probably better than the terrible Sony, definitely cheaper than the expensive Canon, and much more likely to exist than the duplicate Olympus.
Plan F: abandon photography entirely; continue blog by describing blooms in exhaustive detail; lose mind during Schlumbergera season due to insufficient English synonyms for "orange."
Plan G: end blog, never photograph anything ever again, renounce all technology, locate nearby gay-friendly Amish colony, die in grisly and horrifying threshing accident.
Posts
5 comments:
Call your credit card company and get your money back. At a minimum that will motivate someone somewhere, at best you can get your camera elsewhere.
nycguy:
Amazon said that I haven't been charged for it yet because they don't have any evidence that anything has shipped. I called my credit card company yesterday and they confirmed this. So there's no money to get back, as yet, and the credit card company now has a record that I tried to stop the charge from going through, so if the seller tries to charge me later it should be easier to undo.
Surprised you are having trouble with a Canon. They're typically a very good camera.
Paul:
That's what I'd heard, too.
In fairness, it does everything much better than the previous camera -- much faster, better focus, clearer images, etc. -- except for the color reproduction.
Happy 10 year blogiversary! Thank you so much for all the knowledge you've given your readers. I have recommended your blog to friends over and over.
Post a Comment