My new camera... a Canon Powershot A95

I had to get on Dell's case about this camera in order to get their originally advertised deal, but finally the package came today. I managed to get a Canon Powershot A95, surprisingly nice little camera bag, and a 256MB CF card for a great price.

For the record, Dell and Bensbargains.net both advertised a good deal on this camera. Shortly after visiting the Dell website I was able to place the items in my cart and use the coupons, but before checking out I wanted to make sure this was the camera for me. So, I read a few reviews online and went back about 15 minutes later. Dell had pulled the deal that included the 256MB CF card, and replaced it the camera alone for the same price that was originally listed for the camera AND a 256MB CF card. I checked BensBargains.net and Ben had done the same. Apparently, people were actually using the coupons *gasp*, so Dell made the dell better for themselves, and instructed Ben to update the deal to reflect the new offer.

Needless to say, I was fuming, so I called up Dell and ended up talking to Diego, my personal Sales Rep. He wasn't the best sales rep I could've asked for, but after a little bit of an ordeal I convinced him to credit me with a free 256MB CF card. To make sure he could do this, he transferred me into a three way call with someone named Kathy from Online Sales or some such department.

Kathy and Deigo chatted it up a little bit, getting snippier with each other as the conversation drew on. As amused as I was with the fact that I was listening to two Dell service reps argue, I was becoming less patient with the two of them. Somewhere in the conversation, Kathy denied that she was part of online sales, or at least the part we needed to be talking to and said that "If the customer can't place an order online, then we can't either". You read that right. They use the same site we do.

So, I asked them both "Well, why are you there if you just use the same site, and do the same exact thing we do? What happens if the site goes down?". Diego jumped in to try to explain this conundrum, "We usually just tell the customer to try again in 30 minutes." He had just failed miserably in explaining the majority of the reasoning for having a phone sales dept. Oh well.

Anywho, I got the camera today. Everything was as promised, and I'm loving the features. Check out the review from Steve, the hallowed camera reviewer.