Shopdigitaldirect.com deceptive advertising and shady business practices Internet Internet

I searched for a good price on a canon HF10 digital camera on a serach engine and diduprice.com came up with a listing for a seller offering the camera for $449 which is about half the price that reputable retailers are selling the same product.

This webiste listed several retailers with higher prices and also listed shopdigitaldirect.com with a price of $449 and a rating of "trusted seller" so taking them at their word and relyin on good faith, i placed an order on a thursday. I called back the following monday to find out if my order was being processed since I got some lame autoresponder with very general information about my order.

I spoke with someone who was clearly uneducated in either general schooling and clearly ingorant of the product I had ordered. He proceeded to tell me that Canon only had a 90 day warranty on the camcorder. I immediatly became suspicious of this guy. He then went on to try to sell me all types of packages including one so called "presidential" package, another red flag went up, I know enough about deceptive advertising practices and this started to smell fishy.

Their Presidential package included some HD software without which I would not be able to use the camera. He repeatedly told me that if I did not buy this software I would not be able to use the camera. I found it hard to believe that a company like Canon would sell a product that you could not use unless you bought additional junk so I inquired on more specifics about the "HD software". I was asked in a very rude and condescending way "what part of HD software don't you understand"?. at that point I figured I was being had by some 2nd grade dropout who probably could not spell his own name.

I proceeded to request that my original order be cancelled and was told that they could not do that as the order was already being processed in the warehouse, unless I paid a 15% restocking fee. He tried to sell me on other things and I then requested that they honor the order I placed only for the camera, no extended warranty or "presidential" package or filters or any of that nonsense, at this time the fellow said no I am not going to do that either, your order is cancelled, then hung up on me.

After spending about 2 more hours calling and trying to speak with customer service, I was transferred to non working extensions, the manager was never available, etc. etc. etc... I finally gave up without ever getting even a comfort level that my order was indeed cancelled and I would not be charged any cancellation fee.

THe entire experience left me with a very bad taste in my mouth for online retailers. I have had some great experiences shopping online so I know that thankfully this is not how most retailers act.

I would recommend anyone having the misfortune of coming across this ripoff artists to stay clear away from them, they are not a reputable company and they DO NOT HONOR their advertised product prices.

Ray cedrick
Irvine, California
U.S.A.