The manager, a man with a strong (Russian?) accent took me and my friend to his office and asked: are you sailors. That was the first indication that he wanted to swindle me.
He presented me with a camera, which he claimed cost $1600. It was a digital camcorder and mp3 player, 11 megapixels called Digilife DDV-1100. I checked the price on the internet shortly after leaving Florida, it was $190.
He started giving me discounts, and when cutting the price from $1600 to $400, I thought it was an ok deal and bought it. He had several reasons for convincing me. He claimed there would be a 120 days delay for the transaction would be completed, i.E. Before the $400 plus tax, which is now up to $469.87 was to be withdrawn from my VISA card. He also added a memory card, Sandisk Micro SD 1 gigabyte to the deal.in addition to saying that it was the newest technology.
I immediately had regrets after walking out the shop. The camera was a piece of crap, I could feel it on me. I felt very bad, I had been the victim of a highly experienced criminal, using a very aggressive selling technique. The camera had no optical zoom, no press-down focus (green rectangle in the middle), it was not good and I had to get my money back immediately.
All sales final, no money back, no credit card refunds, 25% restocking on exchanges. This is their policy. That was something he never told me, or deliberately kept me from seeing. It was actually written on the receipt and on the checkout desk. I was angry and wanted a standard, compact camera with some optical zoom and good lens. I wanted to know the price of a Sony camera with Carl-Zeiss lens, the price was not written on any item in the shop. Everything he sold was obviously refurbished items. He said I did not want refurbished cameras, so I ended up taking a Pentax Optio T10 compact camera. He did not tell me the price of this either.
After leaving the shop, feeling ripped off and swindled, I checked the box on my way out of the shop. I had no time to go back to the shop since we were about to exceed out parking time. On the interstate out of Miami, I checked the contents of the box. It lacked several items, and one car charger was useless, it was the wrong one. Another rip off had happened. Two frauds on the same day. I could not believe it. He would not even give me the full contents of the box of a (probably) cheaper camera.
For the record, the Digilife camera costs $190 on www.atomicmall.com, the rip off was then $279 approximately. The Pentax Optia T10 would costs $164.95 on amazon.com, which now makes the total rip off approximately $305. Anyway I feel the Digilife camera would have made me very unhappy since it did not have optical zoom, so the Pentax makes me feel less miserable. The rip off is more than 305 since I need to buy charger and all the extra contents of the box which he stole from me.
I was in a rush. I should never have walked in to an electronics store, or electronic store as it says on his business card. There are two shops with the same name, I forgot which one it was, and they did not say on the receipt. One is in 231 E Flagler St, zip 33131, the other one is in 251 E Flagler St, same zip code but different phone number. I did not expect this type of evil behavior from sales people in the U.S. I thought he was just a little weird and a little funny in the beginning. I should have known when he started talking about cameras. He did not have a clue what he was talking about. I guess they are more like that in Miami than for example Boston where I have done most of my transactions.
Harald
Oslo
Norway
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