After much research and many online hours I have decided to take the plunge and buy digital camera. I decided the best option was a coolpix 990. Now, much to my surprise, nobody has the camera available!!! Worse yet no time frame for it to be available. Am I looking in the wrong places? Is this the norm to have to order and wait for ever? What a great business to be in (for sellers) and what a great product for the manufacturer to have lines of people waiting to pay $1k at their own time. Anyway, sorry for the frustation in the above lines, but any advise would be appreciated.

thanks

-- Leonardo Tato (tato97@excite.com), June 20, 2000

Answers

I think that when a new camera like the 990 starts to roll off of Nikon's assembly lines they ration them to the stores. In my case I bought the last camera of the second batch that my local dealer received. Most sources should be able to give you a good estimate of when they will recieve more and my guess is that it wouldn't be more than 10 to 14 days.

-- bill (this_old_house@pobox.com), June 21, 2000.

State Street direct will give you a time table of purchase date/ shipping date. They're a good outfit to deal with.

Also on CNet shopper, you can get a table of price/availability. The dealers with "yes" in the "in stock" column won't actually all have the camera, but calling those dealers is a good place to start. Probably at least one of the dealers claiming to have it actually will.

-- John Lehet (justme@well.com), June 21, 2000.

Also note that "The Digital Dog" (a dealer listed on the CNet shopper page with availability table mentioned above) has a very conceptual definition of "in stock." To them "in stock" doesn't mean that they actually have any cameras to put in a box and send to you. It means they are getting a few in periodically and you may have to wait some unknown time. When they promise a delivery date, it's can pass without the camera showing up at your door. I know this from experience as of today.

-- John Lehet (justme@well.com), June 21, 2000.

I have mine on back order from one online store for over 2 months at $829.00, then I called the other who claimed that they have one in stock. I placed the order on the second store for $869.00 but they couldn't deliver saying that the computer made a mistake of stock but they can get one within few days. Two weeks went by, no luck. I called the first store and they said the new delivery date was August 3 !! I ended up buying from local RITZ Camera for $999.00. By the way, there were 4 RITZ in my area but only one has just one.

-- Tanasit Siriluck (tanasit@flashcom.net), June 21, 2000.

I researched the web extensively to find a place that had the camera in stock. I also phoned a few of the vendors to confirm whether they had it in stock. I eventually talked to a rep at Ecost.com and she assured me it was in stock. It's with UPS now and I've been tracking my delivery, so I can't say enough about ecost.com. The price on the camera was $954.00. Although, ecost.com doesn't charge shipping there is a handling fee of around $24.00.

I can hardly wait. My camera should arrive tomorrow.

Good luck on your purchases!

SJ

-- SJ Dunhill (proflola@aol.com), June 25, 2000.