Safe Gadgets

Yesterday I contacted the shop where I've ordered my 5D mark III to find out some more about this continous postponing of the delivery date.

Historically they have postponed it 1 week exactly - every time they got near their previously promised date.

So I wanted to know if these dates where actual dates where they genuinely expected to have the body delivered by Canon or if they just added one more week when they got close to the deadline.

The answer I got was that these are the dates set by Canon, but that Canon have been extending the shipping dates every week and that Canon wont make any 100% promises.

So, armed with this info I contacted Canon Denmark to hear if they just set arbitrary dates or if they actually believed that they would ship a unit to the store on the promised date.

The answer I got back from Canon Denmark wasn't really helpful.

They started by saying that they don't have access to the stores selling their gear - duh, please tell me something new.

Then they ask me to contact the store for a delivery date - and this is after I told Canon that the dates the store gave me was supposed to come from Canon themselves.

The followup paragraph is a useless - "we deliver on a first come, first served basis"

Yeah, but you still haven't answered my question: Are you promising the stores that are selling your gear a specific date on when they can expect to receive the gear from you(Canon)?

Wouldn't it just have been nice if Canon had said "no, we never supply delivery dates to any store - it must have been something they made up" - then I would have known it was the store making up the dates. Then I could cancel my order and find another store.

Or better yet "We expected to receive X number of unit on Date Y, and based on this we notified each store with an expected delivery date. On date Y-3 we unfortunately got news that the units got delayed; we now expect to receive them on Date Z and we've notified the stores about this delay"

Also, if the delay is because the first units had to be sent straight back to the factory to have the light leak issue fixed, then please tell the stores that this is the cause for the delay, so they can notify their customers.

And please put a big fat sign up on your website if you have delivery problems - or at least put it on the support page for the 5D Mark III.

This is not A Few Good Men you know - I actually CAN handle the truth.