New camera & Circuit City’s pricing

My old Gateway DC-T50 was starting to bite the dust so it was time for a new digital camera. Nothing too fancy; just something that would give me decent prints and have a good optical zoom. I looked at various digital camera review sites for two weeks in order to find a camera that’s a good choice for around $200. The Kodak EasyShare Z712 looked to be the best choice so I picked one up last Friday.

So far, I am really happy with the camera. It has a 12x optical zoom, optical (not digital) image stabilization, 7.1 MP and a 2.5″ LCD screen. Kodak sells the camera direct for $249 and Amazon has it for $219. I didn’t want to wait for the camera to ship so I looked it up on Best Buy and Circuit City’s web sites. Circuit City was showing the price as $219 ($249 now) after a $50 and $30 instant savings. I checked availability at the local store and it was showing as being in stock.

I went to the local CC to buy the camera but the price tag was showing $299. I asked the sales associate why it was $80 more than what the web site was showing. He said that CC gives lower prices for online purchases on a lot of items. I asked if he could match the price, since they are the same company, and he said they couldn’t. The sales manager said the same thing. For $80, I drove back to my office that’s 20 minutes away, purchased the camera online and picked it up at the store 30 minutes later.

Why do some companies do that? I know that there are “web only” specials but that wasn’t the case here. There wasn’t anything on the CC site stating that the price was for web purchases only. This practice is a bad idea because it takes the sale away from the sales associate. The price should be the same or the sales associate should be able to give the same discounts when an online price is not designated as being web only.

Getting back to the camera; I didn’t have to purchase a memory card for it. I already have a couple of SanDisk Ultra II SD 2GB memory cards from a previous project that are no longer being used. The SD card supports a minimum 10MB/s read and 9MB/s write speed. With the Z712 set at 6.3 MP, the optimal high resolution for 4×6 prints, one card can hold a little over 1,000 pictures or 30 minutes of video at 640×480 (MOV format). Two 2GB cards should be enough storage to take a few pictures on the next family vacation.

If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere. – Frank A. Clark

01.Oct.07 General