hah! google noticed my antipathy towards digital wonderworld. *does searches*

forgive me as i collect a summary of my experiences with the company (digital wonderworld aka digitalwonderworld aka digiwowo and previously known as NY camera).

i DID years ago order a cam or a lens from NY camera with success. however the company went bankrupt according to internet sources and lots of people lost their money if they had prepaid their order (foreign examples). the owner of NYC was Gerold Weinmann, who is considered to be related to digiwowo (discussion thread, whois-info). both companies prefer pre-payments.

i ordered a 5D+24-105mm kit from digiwowo a month ago. i made prepayment as they simply promise shipment right after the payment has been made. i e-mailed them a couple days later asking if there is possibly a delay in the shipment. the e-mails are here . at that time i was mostly just baffled by the cluelesness and horrible english of 'Garry'. however it got me suspicious and i requested to cancel my order, to which he replied he doesn't know anything about it but will forward my request to 'the stock' and get back to me later. as he didn't, i sent a follow-up e-mail to which he again didn't reply. i then called him, a very short description of it here. he denied receiving my cancellation, and did not agree to it either way. instead he insisted that i pay 50euros more so he could immediately send me an extra copy of the camera and lens that he has separately (he said Canon had problems delivering the kits, but he couldn't give me an estimation as to when he would receive and deliver any). in the end, as i didn't agree to pay 50 euros for something i had paid already, he lowered it down to 20euros, and i thought it's not much more than i could already be loosing so i agreed to pay it. i transferred it on his account and after the phone call he confirmed what we agreed (the reply is onto a separate cancellation e-mail that i sent through their website as he personally did not reply. i didn't then realize that he is running the business all by himself so all mails go through him). see e-mails here

on june 9th i received a tracking number and from there on it went as planned until the camera arrived.
-the package seal was broken
-it says 'promo kit' under the package, whatever that means, if anything
-the camera does not focus, with any lens -> i took it directly to Canon's warranty repair shop here in finland
-the lens has vignetting which was a problem with the first bacthes of this lens -> Canon's warranty repair will have it replaced.

so, Canon's warranty should take care of things from now on. the package included a bottle of german white wine and i can only assume it is to soothe me while i wait for the body to be repaired. (sarcasm, i don't know what caused the camera to be broken, it only added to my bad overall camera purchase experience)


a friend also ordered the same kit at the same time. he agreed to pay the extra 50euros to get the kit. he was not satisfied with the lens (it had the same problem as mine) and decided to return the whole kit. Garry doesn't want orders returned tho, of course. he has not agreed to it so far (it's been a week or 2 weeks). he also claimed that my friend had switched bodies as the one he returned had apparently had thousands of photos taken with it. as my friend replied that it is simply not possible and not true, Garry dropped it. he just likes to push it, whether it's attacking my american accent or claiming someone of a fraud, or simply not complying to EU laws of mail/online ordering :) this guy is playing in a league of his own. well, my point is really just to say that i was not very satisfied with my shopping experience at digital wonderworld and if i had done any more google research before the purchase i could've avoided this traumatic experience. do your research before you buy online guys and girls :)



update 18. dec 06 -> letters from digiwowo to me they're especially pissed over things that have been written elsewhere on the net (see my links), as if i had control over that. and i am told Gerold Weinmann has nothing to do with the company. well you can draw your own conclusions. essentially i had a bad experience with this company, i don't care what 'Garry's' real name is.

update 23. april 07 -> Jimmy's experience with Digital Wnderworld.
also, e-mail exchange between Digital Wonderworld and another customer of theirs.