It's true. We need to support more local vendors for photo supplies, and everything really. Yea, you pay sales tax but it's a drag when something is defective and you have to send it back and hope you'll get a good one. If you buy it locally you can try it out right in the store or have a replacement often immediately if you need one.
We used to have four really good camera supply stores in Atlanta that you could depend on, with a sizable staff who knew their stuff. Now we have one. Also the rental places are only a shadow of what they once were, same with the great music stores we used to have, all gone to chains, and even they aren't doing well. Everything is online now, and personal service is quickly becoming ancient history. Pretty soon there will only be two stores in America for everything, Amazon and Walmart. Then Amazon will buy Walmart and they will be the only store left in the world and can charge whatever they want and do whatever they want.
john
Similar story here in Brisbane (Australia).
The remaining stores, luckily have quite good sales staff who are very helpful when they are able.
My biggest bugbear is the manufacturers and suppliers who refuse in many cases to allow demo models (especially camera bodies). How in the world one is supposed to make a buying decision merely off a spec sheet is beyond me. Particularly since camera bodies and lenses are not cheap items.
My understanding, in the USA anyway, is that one can order several different models, try them out and then return the one's not wanted with a full refund within thirty days.
One cannot do this in Australia with current laws.
So, many manufacturers and suppliers refusing to allow a hands on demo of their products seems churlish and counterproductive to me.
There is no one size fits all solution (literally) to photographic equipment.
A spec sheet is not the final arbitrator.
I know many people who will not shoot with the Sony A7 series cameras (image quality notwithstanding) because, for them, it is an impractical camera. Luckily, they are experienced enough to know this without having to waste their money first.
(I am not bashing Sony BTW - I own two Sony A7 series bodies. And I like them a lot.)
I also think that many people who might otherwise buy these bodies are put off by the fact that they cannot play with the cameras to see whether they might actually suit their their approach to shooting.
I find this inexplicable in an era where the competition for market share is becoming sharper by the minute. Cameras are not wide-screen TV's and current DSLR/mirrorless consumers are not the types to be starstruck
just by spec sheets. Generally, those that are use smartphones for their photography. It just seems to me that both retailers and manufacturers are missing a trick in their approach to marketing to a more sophisticated crowd. The point-and-shoot brigade have all migrated to the smartphone.
I think that the winner in the battle will not necessarily be the maker with the best technology but those that market the best (not counting spec sheets and press releases).
my $0.02 worth
Tony Jay