Shopping St Maarten

St Marrten is one of my favorite ports,the pier shops are fun to go into, also if you are looking for some new jewelry go to Kay's and ask for Dino, he is great and will look after you very well,

enjoy your cruise.

We always thought St. Maarten shopping was second, only to St. Thomas for duty free shopping value.

Surprise, surprise. We were bamboozled by Boolchand's, at the Waterfront location. I admit that we made an impulse buy, and did not do any research prior to purchasing a camera from this store.

We did check the price of the camera when we returned home, and to our dismay, the list price they showed us on our Panasonic DMC-ZS40 wifi camera with viewfinder, was $100 higher than Amazon and Best Buy, in the states. They also sold us a very overpriced Ultra SD card. They said they were giving us a great deal, and couldn't take off another dollar from the pricing.

We wrote to them and explained the situation, asking to return the camera on our next trip (4 months from purchase to return to St. Maarten); even allowing for the 15% restocking fee mentioned on their receipt, the pricing difference still saved us a lot of money.

Of course, we never heard a word from them. We will never spend a penny with them again!!

Has anyone experienced a similar situation? If so, how was it resolved?