Well.

The good news: The D80 is a very nice camera indeed. Feels nice, take great photos, and makes a very satisfying noise when the shutter fires

The bad news: Dixons are a bunch of scum.

Now, I can hear you saying, "Big surprise THERE!", but I didn't realise quite how bad they were. I was sucked in for the good price, but stayed for the bad service

Here's what happened:

Wednesday 2/1/08 Order D80 from dixons online @ £658 with a £20 discount code. Total £638. Nikon have a £50 cashback offer expiring on 7/1/08, so I'll get the thing for £588 all in. Wonderful.

Friday 4/1/08 Receive tracking number for parcel, told it will be with me in 5 days or so.

Wednesday 9/1/08 Courier turns up, hands me a parcel. Obviously not camera as it's much too small. I get quite a lot of parcels, and assume it's just one I had forgotten about. I sign for it.

The label has my name and address on it along with a bar code. Nothing else. No sign of the source. I open it, and find one (1) Philips GoGear MP3 player, a fairly basic piece of crap I certainly wasn't expecting. There is absolutely nothing else, no indication of who its from or why.

After a couple of minutes of going "What the hell is this in aid of", I finally think to check the tracking code. Sure enough, it's the same as the one that Dixons gave me for the camera.

Now, while it's possible that it could be an innocent error, it's unlikely as the camera is both blatantly different from this vac-packed toy I'm holding, and quite expensive. So the likelyhood is someone deliberately substituted one for the other. Again, while it's possible that this could have been due to the courier, it seems unlikely. It's another item that Dixons stocked, it came in a bag which certainly couldn't have held the camera and therefore most likely came from the warehouse, and the substitution would have been easier there in any case.

So, I called Dixons, explained I was rather perturbed, and politely enquired if they could help ease my perturbation. I was told that they were sorry, it was probably a warehouse error, and they couldn't replace it as they had no more D80s in stock. Not only that, they couldn't tell me when they WOULD have any more. A refund could be arranged, but there were forms that needed to be filled in, and they would send them immediately. When the forms arrived, I could deal with them, send them back, they would arrange to retrieve the wrong item, and eventually I would get a refund. Not really what I wanted to hear.

So, here I am, stuck with an expensive absence of camera. If I wanted an absence of camera I could have arranged one for a lot less money, considerably faster

I checked around and found that the next best price was at Currys. Not too surprising, as essentially they're the same company. None in stock on the web page, but I found that there were a few in shops around the country. As it happened, one of these was, somewhat remarkably, only about 8 miles away. After some hard thought, I decided that the only choices were to continue with an absence of camera, or go and buy this one.

So, I drove over and talked to the guy in the shop. He was sympathetic, seemed unsurprised when I explained what had happened (not very complimentary about his brothers in retail) and happily sold me the D80 kit he had for a mere £679.99, which as the clever amongst you will quickly work out was £91.99 more than the price I SHOULD have ended up paying. £41.99 difference in base price, no discount, and no Nikon cashback as I'd missed the cutoff date. He said he was unable to lower the price or match the Dixons one. Damn.

Anyway, at least I had the bloody thing. It works very well, and as I have said I'm so far very pleased with it.

When I got back I wrote a long email to Dixons customer disservices, explaining the situation, expressing my dissatisfaction with the whole affair, and asking for three things: An apology, a refund, and the difference between the price I had originally paid and the price I ACTUALLY had to pay to get a camera.

Late last night, the 11th, I received a response which essentially told me politely to get bent. They did apologise, but said that they couldn't refund me until the forms were dealt with. These had been dispatched, apparently by being stapled to a snail going in roughly the correct direction, and should be with me in 5 to 7 days. The missing camera was blamed on "unpredictable problems in delivery", and in future transactions they would "suggest that you refuse delivery to ensure more immediate action is taken". No compensation for the difference in price would be offered, and they were forwarding a copy of the letter to the courier so they could look into offering me a refund on the shipping.

The end result is that they seem to be blaming the courier. I doubt I'll get a refund on shipping as the shipping was free. I don't know if I can do anything else at this point but tell everyone I meet "Don't buy from Dixons", so that's what I'm doing. I certainly won't in future.

Nice camera, though.

pca