Disappointed with Sealife Cameras!

There are those who have expressed their disappointment to me that I really haven't been blogging much ever since my camera was stolen. I admit, it did take all the joy and fun out of it for me, and I didn't really feel like just telling the diving stories without the pictures to go along with them. Up to this point, I have been saving up for my Instructor's course and all the specialty ratings that I need, so the money has all been earmarked. However it is Christmas bonus time, so I just got done ordering 2 new Canon SD 950 IS's for Kelli and I for Christmas. I got her the Canon housing, which is small and compact, and I ordered the Ikelite housing for me with the Ikelite AF35 strobe to go along with it. This is the same setup I had that was stolen, and it's an upgrade for Kelli.

I was going to order a couple Sealife DC-800's with an external strobe, one for each of us. Sealife was offering a special deal on two of them to PADI instructors, so I thought that would be a great way to go, and Sealife was trying to get their cameras in the hands of dive instructors who would be using them to teach their students. Unfortunately Sealife showed me that they really didn't care about selling cameras or taking care of customer service. It took me several weeks and about 6 e-mails before I got anyone to respond to me at all from Sealife. Then when I finally got someone to respond, she didn't go out of her way to be helpful at all and gave just the minimum information she could get away with. Sealife was also totally inflexible when it came to shipping options, and insisted it had to be shipped by Fed Ex. Fed Ex is usually a very expensive option to have something shipped to Saipan, so I asked them for a shipping quote before ordering the cameras. The lady couldn't bother to find out the information for me, and just gave me the Fed Ex website and told me to get a quote myself. I tried, but Fed Ex not only would not let me register, but would not give me a price quote. I wrote back to the lady at Sealife, but she never responded, I guess she didn't care that I couldn't get a price quote or that it would mean I wouldn't make the buy through them. I am just always blown away by examples of horrible customer service like this, and can't believe that a company can stay in business treating their potential customers that way. So no, I did not order Sealife cameras, nor will I ever order anything from them ever again after this experience. And I would warn anyone who is considering buying from Sealife that their customer service totally SUCKS!

I ordered my Canon cameras from Adorama at http://www.adorama.com/ and have always had great luck with them and exceptional service. They make sure I always get my order in under a week, and that's saying something when it goes half way around the world. I highly endorse Canon cameras as I've had 5 of them now and absolutely love them. Buy Sealife only if you want massive hassles and to be ignored. Maybe they need a few lessons in customer service!

So with the new cameras on the way, I will start taking pictures on dives regularly and posting them here again, as well as pictures of all my new dive students. Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays, unless you're Sealife cameras, and then Bah Humbug to you!