Bazooka-Joe writes ..

Best Price Cameras (www.bestpricecameras.com) seemingly offered
the lowest price on the camera that I wanted ...

You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble by checking this vendor
at resellerratings.com first ...
http://www.resellerratings.com/seller8754.html ... aka infinityphoto
aka jandkcameras ... rating of 0.28 where 7.5 is considered decent ...
the gripes on resellerratings all sound like yours ...

It's a shame guys like this stay in business but if consumers would
just do a bit of research first they'd know to avoid them ...

Bill