I wrote this a while ago (on actual paper!) intending to post it here but it got burried until now. So here it goes:

I spent part of the weekend looking for a camcorder. That in and of itself is not an easy thing to do. There are very few reliable sources of information out there and what's worse is that they don't do comparisons between models from one manufacturer or of simalar models across manufacturers. But that's not what I want to write about today.

Today I want to write about my experience bargain hunting on-line. There are some great sounding bargains to be had out here on the internet. The camera I finally settled on ranges in price from $504 to $699. Nearly a $200 difference. Wow. Before I jumped at one of the "discount" websites I did some reputation research. Let me tell you that was an eye opening experience! 4.38 of 5.00 sounds great until you read the horror stories of people with bad experiences. Some ordered overnight delivery, got charged for it, and then recieved the product 3 weeks later. Some ordered products advertised as new "factory sealed" but got used merchandise instead. Still others got extra accessories and were charged for them without actually ordering them.

All of these companies were from Brooklyn NY based. I'm not sure if there's a pattern but sorry Brooklyn camera dealers, you're not getting my business until you clean up your reputations online. Although $200 is a quite a bit of cash, it seems worth it to me to be sure that I'm not getting ripped off, or have to go through a lot of hassles to get what I ordered.