Advise required Re trusted Sites and dealers?

[PaulPMW]

Greetings,

Pls can you guys advise me as to which on line shops, in the whole of the USA, or shops in Atlanta can be trusted?

It is all very well choosing the cheapest, but how do I know that I will get the real thing, as well as everything that is meant to be in the boxes?

I am looking for the Canon 400D/Rebel XTi as well as the 24-105mm f4 IS USM.

I ask as I live in Africa and have a friend visiting USA at the moment and could get them to collect for me. They know even less than me re Camera's and therefore I can not depend on them.

Thank you in advance.
Rgds,
Paul

[Cottonsworth]

Well, since your friend is visiting the States, he or she won't be able to make a purchase online and have the item shipped to him or her.  Online stores would want the item shipped to the credit card billing address.  I would recommend that they visit a national chain, such as Circuit City, which are all over Atlanta.

[Lisa Nikodym]

Before buying mail order from any web site, check out the company's reliability at the web site www.resellerratings.com (which has customer reviews and ratings).  B&H (www.bhphotovideo.com) in New York is a big-name place with most anything photography-related you could want, and is completely trustworthy with good customer service.  They may not be quite the cheapest, but any place cheaper is probably much less trustworthy; there are a lot of scam-prone camera gear places out there.  There are several other similar online places that people here on the forum have used, but B&H is probably the most popular and well-regarded of them.

Lisa