Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Eric mentioned elsewhere about Fotodiox for adapters so I went to the site. Put a m43 to Pentax KA adapter in my cart and tried to create an account. No can do Canada does not show up on the list of countries to select. Emailed them about the problem. They entered in to a deal with Nadel to be Fotodiox's dist. in Canada. Called Nadel, they only sell to dealers. Went to Henry's site, twice the US price. Called Fotodiox and after a bit of fumbling around with the phone menu and finally got a human being (never mind their 1 or 2 etc followed by #, just do 0 for operator). Explained the situation and she took my order over the phone.

Screw Henry's

Should mention that Fotodiox has an e-bay store as well but the m43 to Pentax KA adapter was not listed.

Way to take charge. The situation seems unavoidable though, to many middle men. They all need to mark up a little (and henrys needs to mark up more than a little) and in the end we get products id rather have machine myself.

Glad everything worked out for you.

It's not just in photography, that this happens. We have the same problem in the motorcycle world; limited distributors and massively increased prices. We seem to have an additional step in the delivery chain, in Canada, for many different product groups.

I can't even remember when was the last time I stepped into a brick and mortar shop. Why bother wasting time with pushy salesman when I can shop online for MUCH cheaper.

Speaking of pushy sales people, if I may rant...

I was in Vistek, looked around the new first floor re-design for a while, checked out the printers , paper etc and then as I was about to walk out of the sliding doors a sales man yelled at me from the other end," Hello sir did you find everything you needed? Is there anything I can help you with?". Like I was on my way OUT of the store and he finally stopped chattering with another sales person. I didn't even bother to look back. After I got home I aded a few items to my B&H cart that I wanted.

Peter, based on your experience in Vistek, I have to say that I find the first floor sales people not very friendly in general. And I have to say that their film stock is extremely dissapointing now stuck in a little bar fridge. There are a few guys in Vistek who are great to deal with, but they are a small percentage.

When I first arrived in Canada a few years ago i was told the higher prices for camera kit here were due to the weak Canadian dollar.
While here I've done everything I could to ensure the strength of the loony and have helped get it to it;'s current lofty rate of $1.04

But I feel cheated. The prices here still are more expensive than in the US. Maybe I'll have to come up with some other strategy.

If not I'll be heading down to the Big Apple once again to buy another shedload of Nikon gear!

if we are buying stuff from the State, how is the warranty work? will they looking after it? that is the only my worry?

Cheers

Depends on the company...some camera brands (Olympus) have a worldwide warranty and it doesn't matter which country you bought it in.

Others are very strict, even if you're visiting another country with Canadian bought equipment they won't service it under warranty.

It's not just electronics - I was in Buffalo last week and cosmetics seem to be almost half as much in Walgreens than they are at Shoppers Drug Mart.

Important information in case spousal consent is required for a cross-border photography procurement expedition .

While I think a price adjustment is due for a lot of products even if our dollar goes up to $1.20 vs USD, we will still see our prices being slightly higer. The cost of business is just higher in Canada. Granted all virtual stores they don't have the overhead of a front end store, but everything else is more expensive.

Let's not forget the 2 biggest reasons why things are cheaper in the US. Gas prices and volume. I used to work for Labatt (now work for a grocery chain) and people would ask why Blue can be had cheaper across the border. Well, the first is taxes and the second is volume. There is more Blue sold in New York state than all of Canada. So a manufacturer can lower the profit per unit, but still make more total revenue each month in the US. As soon as you get across the border, your cost per unit drops considerably for logistics. Labour is cheaper, gas is cheaper, insurance coverage is cheaper, etc. And that's one thing people keep forgetting, volume isn't just about sales being more, but those factors drive competition for pricing down that support the product movement.

I won't go deep into taxes, but there are more taxes here that impact the price before the item has hit the HST. For example the packaging tax in Ontario. If you sell something as your brand, you have to provide the weight of each type of packaging used (metals, paper, plastic, etc.) times your sales and pay that to provincial government, which goes to pay for local recycling programs.