BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="brocknroller" data-source="post: 3164498" data-attributes="member: 665">I have a moral dilemma about trying a bin out in a store and then ordering it for less online. If the inventory isn't moving, a store owner might be willing to lower the price of a bin. This happened with a local camera/film store. He had a Pentax 20x60 PCF V sitting in the glass cabinet for years. By that time, Pentax had brought out two successive models, the WP and WP II. I tried the WP and thought the PCF V was better, but that could have been sample variation. At the time Pentax was having its annual sale, so I told the store owner what they were asking for the latest version of this bin online, and he said he couldn't go that low, but he could come within $20 of the price. Seemed worth paying the difference to support the local store, and for the ability to try before I buy.The store went out of business a couple years later. Now if you want to buy a camera or camera equipment in town, you have to visit the camera dept. at a big box store where the cameras are on display chained to the display case and where the employees are students and know very little about cameras. This guy had been in business for 24 years and was an expert on cameras and was a photographer. I'd go in there just to pick his brain sometimes. Like Bill, he could tell you some interesting "insider" stories about camera companies. That's partly why I started this thread, because it seems that a lot of local shops are going out of business because they can't compete with online sales. It might be different in big cities, but that's what's happening here in the rural Pa. Even some chains went out of business during the recession. We used to have a Circuit City with a huge selection of CDs. For Christmas, I went to five stores to find my dad the CD he wanted and couldn't find it, and it was Rosanne Cash's latest CD, and she's giving a concert here in March. They didn't even have a placard with her name on it, only one for Johnny Cash. The big boxes just carry the most popular sellers, anything else you have to order online. Brock</blockquote>

Verification