"You'll have to pay for it before we let you see it?"
WHAAAT??
A Nikon dealer would actually SAY this to an established customer? What
utter, complete tripe. I'm an enthusiast, alright - I've bought more
cameras and lenses than any enthusiast/amateur has any business buying,
including an F5 and an F100 and a whole load of high-end lenses - and if
any behind-the-counter meat puppet ever gave me a line like that, I'd
seek out his boss pronto and advise him of my termination of my
relationship with his or her store, and why. If (even worse) the
miscreant was the owner, I'd give him both barrels directly. And then
I'd call up Nikon's Canadian head office ('cuz I live in Canada, see ...
) and give them 10 minutes of rage and brimstone in full detail. I can't
believe Nikon would be pleased by a report like this.
And I presume that any reader of this list would do the same.
I can understand the pressures that lead a store to put the more obscure
items in a company's product catalog onto special order status;
slow-moving, low-demand specialist inventory eats up capital and can put
a store operating on thin margins in a difficult spot. But how can you
justify nonsense like this? What kind of customer service is it to treat
serious buyers of expensive equipment like errant children?
BAH. Share their name with us so we can make sure we don't give them any
of our business! C'mon up to Toronto - there are several excellent Nikon
dealers here who'll treat you like a grownup.
David A. Basskin
Toronto, Canada
