Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Ebay... It has been so long

One can't really be a geek without a geeky camera.. so since its a new year its time for a new camera, well new was the plan but I settled on almost new. Last year I had a small 5MP sony camera which everybody loved before it got stolen from my apartment only 3 months after I bought it. The camera took ok pictures but wasn't so hot in the night when I went out and tried to take pictures, after doing some research I realized it was a common issue amoung compact digital cameras so those are out of the question for this years exercise. After doing some research on ultra zooms this is what I came up with, the SP-510UZ:


I decided to pick it up off ebay and have it shipped to my friend, Alex, in the states who should be coming down sometime in the first quarter.. (hopefully soon) as I refuse to pay taxes duty/gct on this. I am sure over the past year or so I have paid over $100,000 in customs fees just to get my junk into this backward island. I used to shop on ebay quite often last year but that died out after I had a disagreement with a guy on it. It has been so long that much to my surprise after I made payment for the camera I saw the following on the reciept
Congratulations! You have just made your first payment using PayPal.

Thank you for choosing PayPal, the fast, easy and safe way to pay for items on eBay.

I must say to all the critics of ebay/paypal out there that it is pretty safe if you do your due dilligence. I did pay a bit extra for this used camera than if I had bought it new but the ebayer bundled extra things in there such as a 2GB memory card among other things that just sweetened the deal. Another thing that sweetened the deal is that if I buy from an individual on ebay often they will send the item to any location I desire such as my friend. Online stores tend to frown upon such practices and require the shipping address be attached to my credit card and is often a big hassle. This is a bit concerning though as this seems like a wide open door for CC fraud to take place, but i'm not complaining though as it works to my advantage for now via ebay.

On that note of CCs and plastic, over the weekend I went to pricesmart to pick up an item and realized that I've lost my membership card. I think I noticed it was missing from my wallet before as the last time I went there was 3 weeks before but didn't pay it much mind. They issued me with a temporary card good for single use and said I can get two more before I have to buy a replacement card, its cheap though. Upon reaching home I decided to search for it to see if I just left it in a pile of some papers somewhere but only found my health scheme card(I didn't even realize this card was lost).

After some time searching with no success I looked in my wallet again and noticed my visa card was dirty, tried to clean it and unwittingly voided the card after I noticed the signature strip at the back was mostly wiped clean and now the words "void void void" were in place of where my signature used to be. The reason I decided to clean the card was due to the fact that when I recieved it it was stuck to the letter with regular cellophane tape that left a bit of sticky stuff at the back. After I tried to sign the back it didn't come out too right and as a result some merchants ask me for an ID when I try to use it. I am always offended as I remember the days of my other credit card which absolutely nobody asked for verification, I would just pick it up and go and ever since this new visa card I make sure and walk around with an ID.

I called my bank and surprisingly enough they said they would replace it free of charge, so now I am walking around with my old CC and this voided visa as well with plans to go in one day and request a new one. If they could find some way so that I don't have to go to the bank I would be a happy camper. Last year I remember requesting another set of cheque leaves from them and within 2 days a courier called me and dropped it off at my office. I checked my statements the following months and saw no charges for the cheques nor the service, I guess they are doing something right as I am a happy customer with over 5 accounts with them.

5 comments:

Teenage Perfectionist said...

I hope the camera is worth all that. Visit my blog ok.

Anonymous said...

Good luck with the new camera. I'm still a compact digital camera girl - I want it to be easy to take with me oterhwise I won't use it. And to be honest, I'm really a point and shoot person so anything more exciting is wasted on me!

Anonymous said...

A camera is on my list of 'things I need to get'. Not all the websites ask that the delivery address be same as the billing address.
So far I've only experienced that on newegg.com purchasing a notebook harddrive caddy.

Places like amazon will ship anywhere.

I should check out ebay. I must say that I'm afraid to buy certain things second hand though, and camera is one of those things.

Like KG, it has to be compact though.

Anonymous said...

I was about to upgrade my camera till I read the book and found out all the cool stuff it can do. I'll invest in a bashment camera at a later date.

But yours look cool! Mi grudge yu!

Anonymous said...

yeh.. ultra zoom class all the way. you definatly out mega pixel my fuji.. and the one i'm gonna buy is still less than that 6.1 mp but with manual focus and manual zoom.