30th October 2013
Hi there! If you’re a newbie in Photography, you might be wondering where to purchase your camera gears. After all, there are tons of shops, and everything seems to be a good deal. What more, there are tons of brands and every single shop you visit seems to tell you that they have the best equipment for you and that the other brands are moot/bad/etc.
If you’re wondering ‘What Camera gears should I buy?’, please wait for the next post in the series where we’ll talk about that and touch on things like camera bags, straps, tripods, filter, etc. More crucial instead would be to know what not to do when buying camera gear, as it’s rife with challenges.
The biggest problem in buying camera equipment / camera gear in Malaysia are the fact that most shop are there to make a killing. Just like our post on the 5 iPhone 5 cases you’ll love, most retailers we know are out to sell you a low cost product at a premium price.
Now, we’re not against any retailers in particular. And yes, we understand the need for profit, but why sell you a cheap China-made iPhone case or Camera Bag / Tripod for near the price of a branded Manfrotto / ThinkTankPhoto / InCase / Speck / OtterBox? Shouldn’t it be much lower? That my friends, is something we leave to you.
Now, the preliminaries
What NOT to do when buying camera gears in Malaysia?
When you’re purchasing from a shop which seems to sell you the hardware (e.g: Camera) at a much cheaper price than usual, do exercise caution. Sometimes the shop will purposely sell you a CHEAP hardware at cost or below cost, in order to bait you to purchase the accessories at a high margin.
It’s a well known baiting technique that we’ve personally seen many friends fall into. They would come to us for prices for the DSLR, then decide to buy from shop X, and end up paying an extra RM 300 to 1000 on accessories from these shop!
And because they do not know what they’re buying, they end up buying something low end at a very high price (e.g: uncoated UV filter for RM 300, whereas we sell them for RM 30-40)
Thus we come to our conclusion.
- Do not buy from an unknown shop selling unknown brands. At least Google the brand up and read reviews or bring a knowledgeable friend along with you.
- Do not buy in a haste. Always research first.
- Opps! Seems like we’ve hit our limit for today! As much as we like to continue this post, we’ll have to do a Part 2. Hope you’ve enjoyed, “What NOT to do when buying camera gears”
- Consider buying from us, TechGarage.my, as we’re photographers and tech gadgets enthusiasts ourselves, striving to ensure you get a fair deal, as we’re tired of items being way overpriced. Contact us if you want something not on our catalog and we’ll try to bring it in for you =)
See you at Part 2 soon!