buy direct

[samg 0]

I m looking to buy 16CH PoE kit, preferably Dahua with 1080p or higher. I've seen the prices at costco and a couple on ebay and amazon, but was curious to see if anyone had experience buying directly from china etc rather than paying markup prices from "resellers"

 

Any pointers

 

Thanks guys

[buellwinkle 0]

This has been discussed many times before. Search and ye shall find.

[thewireguys 3]

Is it really worth it to save couple of bucks? If you have a support issues it will cost you alot of money and time to ship stuff back.

[samg 0]

i searched before posting but all i found was a couple of ebay links. Pointers please?

[rayt 0]

i have bought direct before, and costco on sale is about the same as direct. costco also provides much better service if you ever need service. Worth it in my books.

[buellwinkle 0]

Basically it comes to cost vs. risk. If all works out well and you are willing to wait a month or longer for a camera to arrive, you'll save some money. If you expedite shipping with DHL or FedEx, you'll get the cameras in 3-4 days but you may not save any money.

 

But if something does go wrong, they will say ship it back. If you ship it via standard USPS it may cost about $25 but no insurance, no tracking, takes a month so big risk because they can say they never got it. Now step up to FedEx and it's $105 for international economy shipping for a 2lb package (1 week). Then it may take them another month to ship it back unless you pay for expedited shipping so now you exceeded the cost of the camera, they know this and milk it. So you can see it's a risk. People in China are not like Americans, they do not have the same sense of urgency, so don't expect lightning turnaround. So why does it cost more than double to ship it back, it's because many of these businesses are in Shenzhen which is in mainland China, but it's a lot cheaper to ship from HK, so they send a courier across the bridge to a shipping service and they pay about half as much as if they shipped it from Shenzhen. On the other hand, you don't have that luxury as you have to ship it direct. Also, doesn't happen often, but a package can get held up in customs at either end.

 

A U.S. company buying them in bulk doesn't care how long it takes to get product and then they save on returns as they can ship back multiple duds at a time and the timeframe for a return is not an issue for them as they carry replacements in inventory and the return rate is factored into the equation.

 

I can definitely see buying 16 cameras separately rather than in a bundle because you have more control over lens size, resolution and types of cameras that you do not have in a bundle. You can also try out various types of cameras one at a time to see if it works in different locations minimizing your risk.

 

Also, be careful of holidays in China as the entire country tends to shut down, not like the U.S. So you have a biggy coming up in a few weeks that will shut things down for a least a few days, if not a week.