Over the last couple of years, I’ve heard about the superior quality of Nikon digital cameras, and when I was in the market for a new camera, they were my first choice. Having tried several of their cameras, I was quick to recommend one to my Dad, who bought a Coolpix 955 and loves it. Recently, I was corralled by the COO of my company, who took me to Best Buy to pick up a camera in time for a business trip the next day. I hadn’t had time to do the research, but I pointed to the Coolpix 4500 and recommended it based on the performance of previous models. Little did I know what a mistake that was.

The camera worked fine on idiot mode out of the box, but it turned out that the camera interface had been radically altered from the 9XX series so that most of the advanced features were accessible only by finger-numbing button combinations. The “icons” on the camera only serve to frustrate and obfuscate what should be an intuitive operation: manually adjusting the shutter speed and aperture settings. Now, I’m a pretty smart guy, so I figured I’d read the manual to learn how to operate the camera. Problem is, I don’t speak Spanish, which is the only language the manual came in. No big deal, you say: Just order an English manual, Bill. Well, I did. Two months ago. Apparently their printer was wiped out in a hurricane, or ran out of ink or something, because the frickin’ manual is still on backorder. And I don’t get word one from Nikon about that via email—we’re sorry; the manual you ordered hasn’t come in yet… Now, usually this isn’t a problem, because you can find a PDF of the manual on the manufacturer’s site somewhere, right? Wrong. Nikon doesn’t make their manuals downloadable to the public, or they don’t believe in PDFs or something, because I can’t get one online and the dipshits at the call center can’t email me one. (They can’t even bother to put the bong down to talk to me, from what it sounds like over the phone.)

So goodbye, Nikon. You lost me somewhere at Guía de usario de la cámera, and I’m on backorder from here on out. I recommended to my company that we sell this brick of a camera on Ebay and move to Canon, whose cameras work as advertised, who ship their cameras with the correct manuals, and who take the time to capitalize the C and S in Customer Service.