B&H delivers scratched camera!

Understood. Anyone would be highly disappointed and upset. But, they will take care of it. Doubt they will do the "you ship yours if I ship mine" thing though. Not unless you want to pay for it and then get a refund. That's too much $$$ for anyone to expect that unless you had a biz account with them.

They went through a bit of a troubled time with packing a year or so again (during last year's triple rebates ), but have since straightened out. One of the B&H people actually ventured into DPReview and got an earful of grief, but apparently the message of poor packaging got back to the top of the operation. My last couple of shipments had padded packing all the way around the product, as it should be.

My recent order from B&H, two lenses and a flash, came very well packed and the box was not damaged at all. Granted this is my only package from them so far.

Tom W wrote:
They went through a bit of a troubled time with packing a year or so again (during last year's triple rebates ), but have since straightened out. One of the B&H people actually ventured into DPReview and got an earful of grief, but apparently the message of poor packaging got back to the top of the operation. My last couple of shipments had padded packing all the way around the product, as it should be.

My two latest shipments seemed like they came from two different stores. One was the MP-E 65 and that was packed very well. The other was an off-shoe cord that wasn't. Of course, the cord didn't require much and it looked like UPS had practiced field goals with it. Product was unharmed. They put the product box inside with only one of those shipping pillows rather than actually "packing" it.

I have a Spyder2Pro on the way as we speak and we'll see how that's packed...

To date I have never received anything damaged from them...Or from any of the other folks I deal with for that matter.

Well, I hope the OP gets a brand new camera. Good Luck.
Now about the packaging: Today, I got my 50 1.4 and my 3021BPRO tripod, and it looked like they just threw the boxes in on top of the air-pocket padding, not placing any on top of the boxes to protect it further. luckily, the contents came through with no visible damage. I know that if anything was wrong with it I could easily get my problem fixed, so no worries.

Exactly what they did for me. The 20D, 430EX, 18-55 lens, BG-E2 all in one box with pocket padding on top only. Nothing on the bottom. Package arrived OK. It only went from NYC to NJ but still that's not very safe if you ask me.

I got my XT from B&H back in September. It was packed like that... a slightly larger box with some heavy brown paper packed in around it. It was not damaged.

As for getting something that a truck could drive over... Apple packs their hardware like that as well. When I got my 20" Apple Cinema Display last May, the box did look like it had gotten run over by the delivery truck.

See attached photo that depicts location and size of the scratch in question . Note that the scratch is actually not white as I made it. Wouldn't that bother you?

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I believe that would bother me. I hope that B&H works everything out to your satisfaction. I am sure that they will. It would be my guess that this camera flaw was missed during packaging... before it ever got to B&H.

Now you have to update your sig to "In Progress RMA's".

Yeah it'd bother me... scratches are meant to be made by the purchaser!

I am sorry, but they are tools....and you know what? They are going to get scratches on them, lenses and all That is, if in fact you plan on using them.
If you like to let them just sit on your mantel...well that’s another thing

Don’t fear getting scratches. Sure I do try and avoid bumps and such...but let’s face it, with anything electronic these days how long do you really plan on owning it? How long will it actually hold its value? I am glad if I can keep my computer for two years and be happy

For instance the well-known "new car" example: The minute you drive that sucker off the lot, you just lost like $10,000. Innless of course its a Shelby or something

Yes I would be like WTF over, when I saw a brand new one, but I would get over it very quickly. Live is too short to mope over small, minute things.

I believe you are correct danedel in that life is too short to worry about such things. I used to get bent out of shape when I would get a scratch on my new truck, but I soon got over it and feel now like it is just adding character.

However, I do agree with CDI, in that coeng would probably feel better if he/she had put the scratch on it after the purchase.

Not to toot my horn or anything but I've had my A2 since 1999 and it has no scratches on the settings display. It all depends on how much you use your equipment and of course how conscious (sp?) you are when handling it. More scratches obviously mean lower resale value. Ask any Ebay seller. 9 of out 10 questions they get from potential buyers are probably regarding scratches on the body even though it has nothing at all to do with the performance of the camera.

FWIW, neither of my XTs have scratches on the displays. On the bodies there are a few but nothing major.

Those LCD displays are quite durable...it'd almost take a utility knife blade to put a nick in it like coeng's has.