catherine96821:
hmm...did not know that.
well, I was standing there on the rental car and they failed to state that the taxes would be slipped through after we left town on the next month's statement.
Certain practices are just unacceptable.
When I bought my D-100 froma Caribbean duty free store for well under Adorama prices, I heard lots of doomsday stories as well.
In fact, I would go there for the D-200.
If you had good luck with the Caribbean duty free store, you may want to consider them again.
As for the NY city fly by night shops often, if you don't order the extras from these shops, they will never send the product. They will however charge your card, and wait until you call to refund. They are not interested in taking a loss on their product, so they just never ship, and at some point the consumer cancels the transaction.
So you are lucky, and do get a D200 from one of these crappy companies you get, no battery, no charger, no manual, no covers, no LCD cover, no strap, no cables, no software, no warranty. Catherine, you NEED the manual with this camera, take it from me!
You are also now having to deal with the issue of finding all these parts.
By the time you order a battery, charger, and all the other stuff that should come with the camera, you will have spent several hundred $$$.
Another issue, if you have to send you camera in for service, minimum is about $500 no matter WHAT is wrong. Nikon may even force you to send the camera in for service to the country it was manufactured for. Authorized USA dealers have no obligation to service non USA cameras, and can refuse to do so. They may even have an agreement with Nikon to refuse service of grey market products, but this is something that I've had difficulty researching.
So you can save a couple hundred bucks, roll the dice, and hope you get a camera with no focus issues, no defects, and no banding. OR you can pay a couple hundred more and get a USA warranty, and have a camera that has more of a resale value to boot. The other side of grey, or stripped kits is that you have MUCH less resale value if you do decide to dump the body in the near future as most savvy buyers avoid grey merchandise used.
I have no issue with grey, and have purchased grey lenses. I mean, what is to go wrong? However with VR, and all the technical junk inside a DSLR there is just too much to go wrong to take a chance IMO. Grey from a reputable dealer often saves very little $$, so there is not point in considering it.