Best price for the Kona 3?

[Bob Zelin]

Markertek and B&H are two of the best, most reliable places to buy the Kona 3. If you were to find “Hymies we beat ’em discount house” in east LA, and be able to get the Kona 3 for 100 bucks less – would you do it ? Doesn’t service and support, and assurance that you are buying a legit product from
an authorized dealer mean anything to you? If cost is everything, you can certainly look for a used Kona 2 on eBay

Bob Zelin

[Walter Biscardi]

[Dan Brockett] “Just received the new Markertek catalog in the mail today. They have the Kona3 for $2,499.00. Anyone find a better out of California price yet? B&H is surprisingly high, $2,899.00, weird, they are usually lower than Markertek.”

I always purchase from a Local VAR (WH Platts here in Atlanta) because then I get service after the sale. Sure it’s nice to save a few bucks by trolling the web, but as Bob Zelin notes, what kind of service will you get from a discount shop.

Very often the local VAR is within $200 of the “lowest price” out there, but I’ll gladly spend the extra money for local support.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Director, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

Now Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Dan Brockett]

Hi guys:

I would only buy from an authorized dealer as Markertek and B&H are both authorized AJA dealers. I was just wondering if anyone had heard of another reputable authorized AJA dealer outside of California that was beating $2,499.00. No matter who I buy from, excellent technical support will be coming directly from AJA.

I have bought three different HVX-200 packages, cards and stores from three different local LA dealers in the past month (all authorized, all ‘reputable’ names in the broadcast/film business) and frankly, the service and support from all three has been adequate to poor. IMHO, VERY few dealers give good service and support anymore, especially on an item as hot as the HVX-200. Two of the three have outright lied to me and have not delivered the amounts of P2 cards that they had promised that they could, one outright lied and said that they were an authorized Panasonic dealer, where upon checking with Panasonic, I discovered that they were not.

My attitude these days is rapidly becoming one of just looking for the lowest price from an out of state authorized dealer and just dealing with the manufacturer/tech support directly myself. The first P2 store I bought was not set up with the correct driver to even read 8GB P2 cards, it could only read 4GB cards. It took me calling the dealers techinical support and hearing how clueless they were to hang up the phone and call Panasonic myself to have them send me the updated driver. Same so far with our Symphony Nitris, the dealer has been fairly clueless on this $90,000.00 editing system, all of our best technical support has been from dealing directly with AVID, the dealer just installed it, lied about the HD CRT monitor they sold us (they showed us a b-stock off of the floor that was working fine, but shipped us a new one missing the HD/SDI card. We had to wait an extra two weeks to use our HD monitor). On and on it goes.

Thanks for the advice and please heed my experience. Good dealers with knowledge that don’t lie are becoming a dying breed, especially here in LA.

Best,

Dan

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[Scott Thomas]

They may not beat the price, but I’ve always liked Safe Harbor (sharbor.com). I’ve not ordered any AJA products from them, but they’ve always been helpful and nice to me.

[Dan Brockett]

Thanks for the recommendation Scott. I will give them a try.

Dan

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[Tony]

Dan,

Can you let us know who the dealers were whom you had the bad luck with regarding the HVX-200? If not full names maybe just initials?

Tony Salgado

[Bob Zelin]

It’s a shame that you bought your $90,000 Symphony Nitris from a bad dealer. The best AVID dealer is Virtual Media – I can assure you that EVERYTHING WORKS from Virtual Media, and they make it right, if there are problems. I know that AVID has local dealer networks, and you can’t go out of your area for most items – which is a shame.

Bob Zelin

[Dan Brockett]

Hi Tony:

Hmm…don’t want to get into a shouting match with the dealers but do want to let all know who they were. Most of the dealers go by initials so that’s too obvious. Let’s just say that all three dealers have two or three letter initials and are included in the following string of letters BSCMPKM. All are in Hollywood/Burbank and none of them provided satisfactory service, two lied and none had even adequate follow up when questions or issues arose, even though we spent from tens of thousands of dollars to well over $100,000.00 with them.

Caveat Emptor

Dan

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[Joe Murray]

I can’t tell if they’re included in your string of characters or not, but Promax is in Irvine and I’ve always gotten good service, advice and prices from them.

Joe Murray