Monday, December 15, 2008

My poor husband

Max has been waiting patiently for Canon to produce it's newest camera. For the first time in many, many years he is able to afford the camera that he desires. There were murmurings on forums and photography podcasts that Canon was going to do something awesome throughout the summer. He went back and forth between getting a Nikon or waiting for Canon to make an announcement.

And then, there were rumors that Canon would finally make the announcement at Photokina. Well, they made the announcement just prior to that trade show and on September 17, we quickly placed a pre-order on Amazon.com.

The Canon EOS 5D Mark 2 ... 21.1 mp, full frame, amazing camera. Max's heartbeat leapt a little at the thought of it.

Canon announced that these would be ready to ship to customers approximately November 15. Max started to get excited.

And then ... nothing. People began complaining to Amazon. It looked like they didn't order enough to fulfill all of their pre-orders. Either that, or Canon simply wasn't supplying them with enough to ship to their customers. Whatever it was, frustration began to set in - not only for Max, but for many other photographers.

I kept watching the pre-order page and nothing was changing. I finally emailed Amazon to see if they could tell us why this was happening and got a 'nothing' response from them. I should check back if it wasn't here by January 31. Are you kidding with this?

Max and I were talking about this last Thursday and he mentioned that some of the comments were talking about Best Buy having the camera available. I went online and lo and behold, the website told me that there was one available at the Best Buy in Lincoln. I made a phone call and after 25 rings, couldn't get through. We started packing ourselves up (at 7:30 pm) to head for Lincoln. I was going to get this camera for Max if it killed me! I called again. A young man answered and couldn't help me, so he connected me with someone else. After 25 rings trying to get into that department, the system hung up on me.

We got Leica and ourselves into the car and headed out. I called again - got the same young man, who decided that this time it might behoove him to actually just do the legwork and help me out. I was driving, Max was getting excited. We got onto the interstate and the young man came back on the telephone. He was sorry, but the website was wrong and they had no more cameras in stock. You could almost feel Max's disappointment. I drove off the interstate at 72nd Street and came on back home.

We talked about running a dual order at both Best Buy and at Amazon. The guy told us at Best Buy that they were expecting another shipment of these cameras soon, so I needed to check back regularly. Hmmmm ... really? No one else seems to be able to get these. In fact, some of the NYC camera stores were jacking up the price by over $1000.00 and actually making the sale! (We would prefer to wait, thank you very much.)

I called Max this morning to make sure that his body hadn't frozen somewhere between home and work, we hung up and within 20 minutes I called him again to let him know that Amazon was emailing to confirm credit card information and the status on his camera order had changed from 'we have no idea when this will be fulfilled' to 'delivery will happen this week.'

When he got home this evening, he told me that phone call distracted him quite a lot the rest of the afternoon. Goofball! Now, I just need Amazon to tell me that it actually has shipped.

I wonder if Max was ever this excited about me? (hehe) I'm betting the answer is ... well ...

1 comment:

Fran said...

Oh my gosh, can it really be that close to Max finally having his camera, now I am excited for him as well!!!!!!!
F