Purchasing battery grip

Is it me or does someone hate me buying cameras and accessories. You know of the saga of buying the Nikon D300 in a previous thread.

Well now I didn't realise how difficult it would be to purchase a Nikon D300 genuine battery grip. Looked on ebay but most were 3rd party grips and those that wern't were from abroad, mainly the far east not that they arn't any good, but if faulty a long way to send back for repair/replacement. So I decided to get one from here in the UK. My worry was that the 3rd party grips should they cause a problem with the camera the warrantee may become invalid, you know what some companies are like, any excuse to avoid repairing something.

Anyway back to getting the grip, I have to mention one company I would definately not use and that is Simply Eletronics, what a shambles. Let me explain.
I decided to ring them to place the order, and after listening to the message and then push button 2 I was put on hold with a message that there would be only 1 minutes wait in the queue. Well I was still holding on 8 minutes later,then YIPPEE I was put through to a "plank" on the sales team. First he took down what I was after twice, then confirmed the item was in stock then the problems started. I won't give out my whole business e-mail address but first he couldn't spell the main word of the address or even the first part come to that. When he tried to spell the first word back "enquiries" he spelt it as "inquirys", by this time I gave up, I didn't want to spend the next half hour spelling out every word. Thats the shortened version.

So the company lost a £200+ order because they obviously have employed someone without checking they could even spell.

With the current recession, which is really bad here in the UK, you would think that companies would go all out to make sure sales queries were delt with by a team with some educational standards.

I wonder if anyone else has come across anything similar?

Bazza

Why not just order it from their site?

I think most of these cut price retailers now do most of their business online...

Azz did in the end with another retailer but I am loathed to use my credit card number on line. I usually do it through paypal if I do make any purchases via the net, at least that way I know I am more secure

Bazza

I always pay by credit card as that way they are half liable in case anything goes wrong

it must be just you then bazza - Ive used Simply Electronics on occasion with nothing but good service and courtesy. In fact when recently returning an item they couldn't be more helpful and efficient in refunding my credit card.

Incidentally, although they have a UK office they order through Hong Kong suppliers...all bona fide kit - my order (made online) reached me in Cyprus within 5 days of my order.

I later found the same product cheaper - so in accordance with their returns policy they gladly agreed to refund me for said item and were very helpful in explaining the returns process.

I wish I had similar levels of customer service when dealing with shops face-to-face in the UK.

Simply Electronics seem to be a mixed bag. JR has already pointed out they are a front for a Chinese company. I think the general gist seems to be they don't rip you off as such but rather they promise on delivery and it often gets delayed, several weeks sometimes. They usually come up as the cheapest in online searches. I guess if you look any company up then you will find horror stories.

Anyway Bazza was interested to know what made you fancy a battery grip for your D300?

Simple BC Occassionally I would like the 8fps to capture more shots of a bird in flight.

Bazza

Ah ha... (ah ha..hah hahah ha ha...) I only wanted to say 'ah ha' but it wouldn't post because it was too short so had to type more and then it needed an explanation!

The grip came today So I just had to try it out, well wouldn't you?

First impressions

It definately adds a fair bit of weight on carrying the camera as it is quite a chunky thing, but suprisingly enough it has steadied the camera down a lot from camera shake ( maybe because I can't lift itl)

It was easy to fit and did so perfectly,the controls took not very long to fathom out and using the camera in the vertical position seemed strange because the viewfinder was on the side half way down, instead of being on the top of the camera as when used horizontally.

The Nikon D300, with the grip fitted, one can choose which battery the camera uses, first by default it is the one in the camera. I did have to hunt through the menu to alter it to the battery in the grip to be used first.

When viewing the amount of charge left in the batteries the menu does show both batteries and which is being used first which is handy if one forgets

Any negative points? well only two I can see, they don't include the part for using an EN-EL4 battery. This is extra at around £25/30 depending where purchased from and that battery comes in at a whopping £95 purchase again seperately, but has twice the charge life.
That is personal preference to buy but it does come with an AA battery clip anyway.

The other negative is one has to remove the grip from the camera to get to the camera battery for charging, I would have preferred , dare I say, the Canon grip which holds both batteries.

Ok why did I eventually decide on the Nikon grip against third party ones a lot cheaper. Several reasons, the first being should something happen within the camera and Nikon found out a third party grip was being used it might invalidate the warrantee. Next I did have a very close look at other makes and reports on them from people who decided to go down that route instead.

The general concensus was most wern't as well built as the Nikon one, or the fit wasn't very good leaving a gap between grip and body, or they didn't have weather sealing between the grip and body. My worry on this score was if I used a heavy lens like the Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 together with the Nikon D300 on a tripod/monopod the grip would give way.

What it would be like for a days shoot I don't know but my guess is you would certainly know you had been carrying this setup around. If I was to give it a star rating out of 5, I would give it 4 as explained in the negative section of this review.

Bazza

Interesting review

xx