Ordering a Canon camera from Dell is no Deal this time

I place a fair number of orders with Dell, though it is more for accessories than computers. Their sales on digital cameras in the last year and LCD monitors from 2003-2005 have been very good. In fact, the last 4 orders were for digital cameras, largely gifts. (Their price of $540 for a Canon Rebel XT with the 18-55 kit lens before Christmas, remains the best price I've seen to date).

I wanted to get a Canon A530 (the lowest end medium sized PowerShot) but missed the deal in Nov 2006, as this camera maybe discontinued. I was thus, surprised in a happy way to see the bargiain site DealCatcher show that Dell Home advertise it on a 20% sale in mid January with the somewhat commonplace free shipping. I didn't dilly daly and ordered it. The ship date was 2/14/07, about 2 weeks away. I've ordered from Dell often enough to semi-expect that on a "hot" item, though this was definitely not considered an in-demand item.

I checked back on 2/09 or so, and the A530 was still to be shipped. On 2/16, I checked and the order was not shipped yet. Mostly due to the order having been cancelled. By Dell. Without even notifying me(!!).

Of course this was a Saturday that I noticed. On the order status page, I read "If you do not find a new Order Number or if you feel your order was canceled or changed in error, please contact Dell's Sales Representatives at 1(800) 915-3355, option 1, ext. 7243784 for assistance." Not surprisingly, this number will be out of service on Friday Dec 22. I wasn't sure which year, but it was 2006. Nice. The website gave me an out of date phone number.
They really want you to use the website. After trying the chat with a rep deal, I was told the wait would be 2 minutes, but the person never came on line to chat. (Could it be that I was using Firefox?)

I think I got my fair shake, though. I called back today (a Monday, President's Day) and first spoke to a cust rep, who understood the issue in a polite but brainless way and who then made a note of it. I was transferred to a sales rep and in a transaction that took around half an hour, he finally reinstated my order for the same price but for the next higher level up camera, as the bottom level unit apparently is out of stock. I was using speaker phone mode, so I was not at all inconvenienced by the wait.

I'm not sure how much a sales reps time is worth but it must have been at least $30 all told.

And all for a $120 camera.