what is up with sales in B&S ???

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RCicala
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p.2 #1 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

I can't comment on the B&S board, but as someone who sells a lot of used gear, I can say demand for used Nikon gear is down quite a bit the last 6 months. Some of the reasons I've considered:

People are concerned about the repair situation.
A lot of folks have probably spent their year's gear budget on a new D800 or D4.
A lot of those same people have sold their old gear, so it's a buyer's market.
The holidays are coming and times are tight.

But that's just guessing. I really don't have a clue why, other than the used market fluctuates a lot.

Edited on Nov 16, 2012 at 10:31 PM · View previous versions

Nov 16, 2012 at 06:11 PM

krickett
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p.2 #2 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

I think the last post kind of hit the nail in the head.

Nikon has released a lot of new products lately and people kind of dumped their budget on that stuff. That's definitely the story with me.

I bought a D800, 28 1.8, and 85 1.8 this year, and I really don't see the need for anything else. If anything, it prompts me to put more of my used stuff on the market to soften the budget hit a bit, which just makes the used market more competitive.

Nov 16, 2012 at 06:42 PM

davidnholtjr
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p.2 #3 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

Jorge Torralba wrote:
I have a d800 with 122 clicks, 11 month of warranty left at a very good price and it is dead out there. The economy seems to be getting worse.

I hear you. I've been having a hard time on all the forums trying to sell stuff.

Nov 16, 2012 at 07:16 PM

mmurph
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p.2 #4 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

RCicala wrote:
People are concerned about the repair situation.
The holidays are coming and times are tight.

other than the used market fluctuates a lot.

I just bought a Nikon D3200 to play with for the winter. I had a Nikon D800E on pre-order, but I didn't want to switch systems during the middle of the summer. I'd rather be outside working than inside buying, selling, researching.

Now I don't really need a high end camera until April or May, so no hurry for me. (I also have a lot of Canon. Just two T4i right now, but I had a 5D3 and a 1DX earlier this year.)

I passed on the D800 refurb with 90 day warranty at $2,500 at Adorama recently, because I didn't want to spend weeks and months shipping the thing to Nikon and fighting with their poor customer service. (I also just passed on one at the Nikon store for $2,430 today, again 90 day warranty.)

Actually service has become one (of many) important differentiators between the two companies for me. I sent a lens in to Canon for a CLA. With CPS (Canon Professional Services), I sent the lens on a Wednesday. They received it, serviced it, and shipped it back Express for free ON THE SAME DAY - Friday.

I had the lens back the next Monday, a total of 4 business days round trip. Brilliant!

If Nikon was anywhere near that I would have purchased the D800 without hesitation. I just wasn't up for the hassle in case of problems.

But the number of refurbs from the left focus issue may also be pushing down resale prices? On the Canon side, it is unusual to see so many current model refurbs available, so early in the product life cycle, especially through retailers. The appearance of so many refurbs is usually the sign of an impending new release from Canon, as they blow out the old stock.

Best,
Michael

Nov 16, 2012 at 07:24 PM

Javier Munoz
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p.2 #5 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

B&S is far from what it was a few years ago. I would blame mostly to the sellers. Most of them price their items above what you can find for refurbished or used in reputable stores. These places offer (at least) 90 days warranty. If you add the QC issues to the equation you have the answer.

Nov 16, 2012 at 08:53 PM

Javier Munoz
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p.2 #6 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

RCicala wrote:
I can't comment on the B&S board, but as someone who sells a lot of used gear, I can say demand for used Nikon gear is down quite a bit the last 6 months. Some of the reasons I've considered:

People are concerned about the repair situation.
A lot of folks have probably spent their year's gear budget on a new D800 or D4.
A lot of those same people have sold their old gear.
The holidays are coming and times are tight.

But that's just guessing. I really don't have a clue why, other than the used market fluctuates a lot.

Some people hesitate to buy from rental stores since they might be concerned about the lifetime of an item that has passed through many hands.

BTW, what is the reason why Nikon items have warranty of 90 days and panasonic doesnt. I am really curious about this since I was eyeing one of the MFT lenses you sell.

Nov 16, 2012 at 08:56 PM

jim allison
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p.2 #7 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

Please don't take this personally, but you are asking too much money. It is that simple.
Market conditions vary and at this time, IMHO your camera is only worth about 2250.
That is just 10% less then a refirb that comes with a warantee. Personally, I wouldn't accept the risk of buying a camera from a private party, no matter how good their feedback, for less then a 20% discount. You could get lucky and I hope you do, but you might as well face reality
and price it to sell.

Nov 16, 2012 at 09:07 PM

techtalker21
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p.2 #8 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

Used prices for Nikon SLRs and lenses are patently ridiculous. Seriously, either the owners are living in fantasy highway or they are actually getting buyers dumb enough to pay 98% of the street price for a camera that will be made obsolete within a couple years.

Lenses are the biggest ripoffs as i've seen asking prices that exceed the price i paid for the lenses brand new! After that is undoubtedly the D700 (ancient obsolete tech).

Highway robbery, that's what the asking prices are. If i want to have a good lulz, i go peruse the B+S for Nikon equipment.

Nov 16, 2012 at 10:06 PM

lbloom
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p.2 #9 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

Folks -- he said he sold it, many posts ago.

Nov 16, 2012 at 10:25 PM

RCicala
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p.2 #10 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

Javier Munoz wrote:

Some people hesitate to buy from rental stores since they might be concerned about the lifetime of an item that has passed through many hands.

BTW, what is the reason why Nikon items have warranty of 90 days and panasonic doesnt. I am really curious about this since I was eyeing one of the MFT lenses you sell.

I don't disagree with your first point at all, but would add that should affect all brands equally, but we're seeing rapid turnover in some other brands. It might be, though, that the repair issue makes Nikon users less comfortable about buying from a rental shop, which I certainly would understand.

It's not brand specific, rather it's the price and the serviceability. Most items over $1,000 have warranties for 90 days. Under that the cost of the warranty, which is roughly the same to us whatever the lens price, becomes unreasonable.

There are also some items, like a couple of Panasonic 12-35s we have up now, where we just aren't certain about repairs so we don't offer the warranty: in that case we don't have access to parts and don't know the lens well enough to repair it in-house. At the same time we're uncertain about how long turnaround time might be if we sent it in for repair: if we said 'warranty' but then you found out 'repair may take 45 days' you wouldn't be happy with us.

In cases like that, though, we're happy to consider putting a warranty on the item but want to talk with the customer first to make sure they know exactly what kind of problems we may have with the warranty. To be clear, we're not having any particular problems with that lens or with Panasonic, but we haven't had enough interaction to be comfortable with them either.

Nov 16, 2012 at 10:43 PM

allstarimaging
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p.2 #11 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

I have a friend who purchased a Nikon D800 off the buy/sell here at FM. He sent it to Nikon in NY to have it checked for the left focus issue and they took it in under the warranty no questions asked and he is not the original owner. I just bought one myself off the buy/sell and plan to do the same. On the sale of the camera they are selling. It's a price driven market and while the economy may not be great stuff on the buy/sell moves when price meets demand.

Jack

Nov 16, 2012 at 11:06 PM

mmurph
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p.2 #12 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

allstarimaging wrote:
He sent it to Nikon in NY to have it checked for the left focus issue ...... plan to do the same.

Thom Hogan has pretty detailed directions on how to test for the left focus issue on his web site.

It is not hard to do. You might try it and potentially save yourself a few weeks, plus shipping costs, if there is no issue.

Unless you are sending it in for other reasons too? If so I would be interested to hear what else you will have them look at? Thx!

Michael

Nov 16, 2012 at 11:42 PM

CGrindahl
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p.2 #13 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

A friend whose work regularly appears in the Sierra Club Wilderness calendar bought a D800 about six weeks ago without concern for whether there were problems with focusing using left points. For the work he does it simply doesn't matter. As noted above, he was simply interested in the additional megapixels.

For the rest of us, I'd surmise that one thing affecting demand for used copies of the D800 is the presence on the market of the D600. Many of us are disinterested in 36 megapixels and therefore more attracted to the D600 which at retail is five hundred dollars cheaper that your used price. I'm not suggesting you lower your price, but I've little doubt the presence of a 24 megapixel camera with outstanding dynamic range at a pretty sweet price is having its affect on the market.

Nov 17, 2012 at 12:00 AM

Javier Munoz
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p.2 #14 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

RCicala wrote:
Javier Munoz wrote:

Some people hesitate to buy from rental stores since they might be concerned about the lifetime of an item that has passed through many hands.

BTW, what is the reason why Nikon items have warranty of 90 days and panasonic doesnt. I am really curious about this since I was eyeing one of the MFT lenses you sell.

RCicala wrote:
I don't disagree with your first point at all, but would add that should affect all brands equally, but we're seeing rapid turnover in some other brands. It might be, though, that the repair issue makes Nikon users less comfortable about buying from a rental shop, which I certainly would understand.

Makes sense. All brands should be equally affected.

In the case of the Nikon D800 and D800E you are selling I would refer to the previous posts about how people would prefer to buy refurb at a cheaper/equal price. One thing that I missed on your website is the number of clicks on the cameras you sell.

RCicala wrote:
It's not brand specific, rather it's the price and the serviceability. Most items over $1,000 have warranties for 90 days. Under that the cost of the warranty, which is roughly the same to us whatever the lens price, becomes unreasonable.

There are also some items, like a couple of Panasonic 12-35s we have up now, where we just aren't certain about repairs so we don't offer the warranty: in that case we don't have access to parts and don't know the lens well enough to repair it in-house. At the same time we're uncertain about how long turnaround time might be if we sent it in for repair: if we said 'warranty' but then you found out 'repair may take 45 days' you wouldn't be happy with us.

In cases like that, though, we're happy to consider putting a warranty on the item but want to talk with the customer first to make sure they know exactly what kind of problems we may have with the warranty. To be clear, we're not having any particular problems with that lens or with Panasonic, but we haven't had enough interaction to be comfortable with them either.

THanks for the clarification. Makes sense again. I was actually talking about those 12-35.

Nov 17, 2012 at 12:38 AM

RCicala
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p.2 #15 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

Javier Munoz wrote:
One thing that I missed on your website is the number of clicks on the cameras you sell.

I don't want to hijack the thread, so please pm me if you need more info, but we won't post clicks (although we're happy to send you an image to check yourself). The main reason is some different programs will give different numbers. I don't want to say "10,000" and the program you use says "12,000". Some read shutter clicks, others images recorded, others button pushes.

But the other thing is that with rentals a lot of cameras are used for video or spend hours in live view. I had one camera recently with only 12,000 actuations but so obviously beat up and with 6 hot pixels that we wouldn't even list it for sale - it's parts now. We retire a lot of cameras, but rarely for shutter failure, so we don't think about that as much as most people.

Nov 17, 2012 at 01:49 AM

Nikon_14
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p.2 #16 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

Over the past 4 years, I've bought/sold two D200's, 2 D300's, 1 D300s, 1 D7k, lots of glass & Speedlights...

and Jorge, I'd mirror your observation that it is indeed a lousy economy, notwithstanding some opinions that "The private sector is doing fine."

Nov 17, 2012 at 03:31 AM

Jan Brittenson
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p.2 #17 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

I bought a 35/1.4G the other day, but other than that I'm selling off non-Nikon gear, not buying. It's definitely prudent to see what's going to happen with tax hikes, business costs, and the business cycle over the next six to twelve months. Right now I think smart people hold onto their money.

That said, to sell a D800 you have to beat the refurbed prices from authorized dealers that take CC's - or it's going to be hard to sell. That means in the $2350 neighborhood probably.

Nov 17, 2012 at 04:35 AM

DontShoot
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p.2 #18 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

I have the money, but don't really want a d800

Nov 18, 2012 at 08:35 AM

carstenw
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p.2 #19 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

Jorge Torralba wrote:
Big difference between refurb and new. this camera is basically new. and as far as warranty transfers, thats not an issue since there is a recipt and it has not been registered yet. oh, and a gift receipt as well. None the less, it just sold. so, I started this thread too soon

Yay, the economy is recovering already! At what price did you sell?

Nov 18, 2012 at 12:01 PM

lxdesign
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p.2 #20 · what is up with sales in B&S ???

FWP

Nov 18, 2012 at 01:11 PM

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