While in general you're correct about calling and speaking to a person live, that's still no guarantee of getting good service these days. I've made numerous calls to various stores about this camera, and only three people I spoke with were knowledgeable, friendly, and genuinely helpful. Another was helpful but neither knowledgeable nor friendly. I guess a (generously graded) 25% hit rate's not too bad these days <LOL>
My uncle was an engineer, inventor, and a designer of cookware and kitchen products for the home and industry. You'd know the products he developed. Anyway, when a prototype was ready for final testing, he wouldn't let the engineers test the product. He went to the office staff and found men and women who might be typical buyers of the product, and told them to beat the shit out of it. Press switches in the wrong order, disregard the instructions, overload the capacities, and so on. That, he said, was the only way he'd really know how the product would work in the real world - the world of the harried cook or home maker, the world of kids putting marbles in the blender, the world of men drying their laundry in the microwave. It may sound funny, but these were all things he saw done when testing. Of course, he'd take the products home with him and have his wife and kids try it out, and some of the neighbors as well. You're absolutely correct that more testing and care is needed in the marketplace these days. Some honesty would be helpful as well. I can tell you that Pentax USA lied to me about the availability of their products, specifically the istDS2. I now know this to be true, it having been substantiated ~FIVE~ times by knowledgeable people dealing with Pentax USA who are not directly affiliated with them. The last confirmation on this was just a few minutes ago. Yet Pentax USA, as of yesterday or the day before, still had the camera listed on their web site as being available to purchase, and two different representatives from Pentax USA told me, in no uncertain terms, that the camera was available and was not discontinued. Now, maybe saying they lied is too strong. maybe they are only out of stock, and five of their dealers misunderstood them and gave me misinformation. Maybe it's a matter of semantics, and the camera isn't "officially" discontinued, and it's just that there won't be any more in the pipeline or any more being made. This whole experience of trying to find a camera that was released only a few months ago has been an eye-opening experience. That the camera has been replaced with a lower speced version, the istDL, says something about Pentax, that they don't have a clue as to what they're doing. The DS and DS2 were popular cameras, a nice bridge between the DL and the bigger D and it's soon-to-be-released replacement. Feh! Shel > [Original Message] > From: Larry Levy > Welcome again to the world of customer-service that is not customer tested. > I can certainly empathize with you. Of course, you could have spent your > time on something more productive (like sleeping) and never had the desire > to have your expectation raised to only have it dashed by lack of > availability of the item you enthusiasticly plowed through the process to > order. > > Unfortunately, this is all to common. At work (I'm a retired > consultant/systems designer working at RadioShack) I have to deal with > systems that were evidently not tested using real people. For example, to > issue a new Cingular cell phone I request a desired area code early on page > 2 and than enter all sorts of detailed information in pages 2, 3, 4 and 5 > before the system tells me that that area code is not currently available > and I have to back through all the pages and select an alternative number. > Then I have to re-enter the data going forward again. This can happen for > several iterations. No one bothered to think of checking for availability > when requested. > > It would be all too easy for the site designer to have the system go > through a routine to check availability before asking you to give them all > that detailed data. But then again, their database may have indicated > availability and the software would have blithely let you go on anyway. > > Sometimes I think that there is a huge market for people who will test and > critique websites before they go live to the public. Usually the testers > have too mujch knowledge and make assumptions that the real user wouldn't > know enough to make. The public often just gets annoyed and goes away. The > opportunity losses would pay for an huge amount of real testing. > > So what's the solution to your issue? I'm a systems kinda guy (beginning > with first generation vacuum tube computers and programming in machine > language), but when I really want to know about something, I call. This > means I can talk to a real person who will tell me about the product > actually being physically there and available for shipping to me. Most of > the standard internet companies we deal with (e.g., KEH, Adorama, B&H, etc.) > will actually do this. > > Every once in a while, this process doesn't work for a more arcane product. > I saw a Refconverter-A on the 17th Photo site for a great price. Not > trusting this, I called and their rep went and got it. I ordered it and > received a Refconverter (huge difference). I was even more disappointed than > I had been while I was in the search process. I called them and they took it > back and refunded me all my out of pockets with an apology. They even > updated their website. I'm not complaining about 17th Photo. They made a > mistake which they corrected. I'm just pointing out that even working with a > live person leaves room for customer service errors. > > Good luck with your ongoing quest for a DS2.
