C300: Avoid Canon's 0% Interest Monthly Payments Scam

LucasTanakaFilm said:
Adding to the positive experience group.

I had a c100 that I paid off a few months early, and now I'm almost done with a 2 year C300Mkii lease.

I've always paid on my credit card, auto-pay, and have never had any issues. The only downside I see is I would have been open to buying a used package for less with more accessories.

I've never paid any additional fees besides insurance, which I meant to have my own, but I just used theirs.

It's been almost 4 years since my first lease and I would happily do it again after the C300mkii if I needed to.
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Their 0% financing is really fine, once you understand how it works. The problem that some people had was that the little "gotchas" weren't necessarily disclosed up-front by some companies or reps, so that they could be avoided. I completely understand the insurance requirement, because until the equipment is paid off(and you buy it out from the lease), it is Canon's property and they must make sure it's protected. But I feel that they should really let the customers know the ridiculously short payment window that they will be up against if they do not set-up a direct/automatic payment option. If paying by check through the mail, you could literally send the payment the day you receive the bill and it could still be late. As opposed to most "normal" bills that people receive and often have several weeks to pay.

I believe I actually had to pay my first bill over the phone and then immediately set-up "auto-pay" with them, because I was on the road ~five days a week at the time and would more than likely have missed the payment dates all of the time.
 
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dcoughla said:
I appreciate that you took the time to type all that out but to be honest I'm no longer interested in any back and forth. Cherry picking data, relying on anecdotal evidence and attacking sources without providing alternatives is where I bow out.

As far as the debt thing goes, literally all you have to do is get a credit card at age 18, make a small purchase on it 1x a year and pay it off, and you're on your way to an excellent credit score. Most people don't know that. That makes the people who do know and implement that strategy the minority. If you want to advocate against that, be my guest.
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Sorry, wasn’t trying to ‘cherry pick data’ or whatever you
are saying. All the actual Juneau homes on your Zillow list
are totally legit. But read through the list and you’ll find a
lot of land only, or homes not actually in Juneau...
which is the way real estate works here. Homes in Hoonah,
Angoon, Gustavus and other villages are advertised in Juneau
as it is the closest population center to these isolated villages.
They may only be 60 miles away.....but there’s no roads here
so it’s not like you can live there and commute to Juneau.
When 200 people live in an island village they are going to expand
their advertising and hope to convince someone in Juneau that it
would make a good ‘weekend getaway.’ Not much of an economy in
those places.

Getting good credit is a bit of a ‘black art.’ Sure getting a card
at 18 and buying 1 thing a year and paying it off is a good start.
But then you also have to do a bunch of other things. Keeping
your ‘available credit’ to ‘used credit’ ratio correct. Not having
too many credit inquiries in a given amount of time. Closing
accounts can even make your score go down. And quite a bit
more. High schools should really have a required class to teach
kids about this stuff in my view.

It’s cool, I can agree to disagree, everyone is different, I surely
don’t think I’m right every time. I’ve managed to get where I am in
life without credit pretty easily but that’s just me and I totally get
it might be impossible to do for most other people. Do what you
gotta do to make a living wherever you are. Personally, with the
way this business is (big tech changes making cameras outdated
overnight, clients putting a constant downward pressure on prices)
I’d be pretty hesitant to take out a loan on a camera.
But to each his own. Sounds like this particular 0% loan
is best paid online on autopay. Which is probably a pretty
valuable thing to know beforehand for potential customers.
 
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When you do a lease, you are not buying directly from Texas Media Systems, but from the leasing company.

When you lease finance a camera from Canon, Canon likely has a business office in your state creating a nexus for sales and property taxes.

Texas Media Systems doesn't charge sales tax when we sell directly to buyers located outside Texas. About 99% of our in state customers also do not pay Texas Sales Tax since Texas

Sales Tax Exemptions, full and partial, are offered by many states like Texas, Maryland, California, and New York.

At Texas Media Systems, we typically try to include the appropriate Sales Tax Exemption form for you to sign to submit to the leasing company if available in your state.

To eliminate the insurance fee, you just need to get your insurance agent to add the leasing company as an "Also Insured" to your existing policy.

brettsherman said:
They don't really have an exemption, they just don't have to withhold it because they don't have a business presence in your state. Technically, you are generally supposed to pay your own state's sales tax, but nobody does that. This is why South Dakota just passed a controversial law to collect taxes from online sales.
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Sorry if this was mentioned before. Really didn't want to search through 5 pages of people lecturing about credit card responsibility.

How long does leasing process take about? From when you sign up, approved, to getting the camera? Might be a suitable option for me instead of renting but need to make sure it wouldn't cause a scheduling conflict.

Also, does the customer have to return the camera once the lease is up, or is it a lease to own program?
 
We can do complete leases in a day or less at Texas Media Systems

We can do complete leases in a day or less at Texas Media Systems

You own the equipment at the end of the $1 Buyout Lease Financing Program that Canon, Sony, Panasonic, and Zeiss offer.

We don't do a lot of True Leases to filmmakers since you still wind up paying for the majority of the gear, but have to return it at the end of the lease term.

We can often complete leases in a day or less if you are able to sign and return the lease docs.

Sometimes, the lease company will ask for tax records if the credit is borderline or missing.

If the credit is borderline, the lease company might ask for a deposit or pre-payments.


 
As per CFS definition lease purchase is "non-cancelable contract" that lets you "purchase" the camera at the end of the lease period for a whooping $1. Lets cut out the Orwellian double talk - it's a buy not a rental. For a rental, gear insurance makes sense because both parties are responsible. But when you buy? What does it concern Canon that my gear burnt down in a house fire if the contract is non-cancelled so i still have to fulfill the obligations and pay for the camera? Just like the OP, i was burnt by the experience of buying through CFS. For once i didn't have equipment insurance with my liability insurance (i own all the gear - if something happens to my gear the production that hires me is responsible). Yeah the clause about the insurance if buried somewhere in the contract but when you "buy" something you don't care about reading fine print especially since it was never explained to us in the first place before making the purchase. So the original purchase price of $10k (plus $1k tax) quickly jumped up by $1200 in gear insurance over next 2 years.

There are friendly people working at CFS but it's one hugely disorganized operation that had to process our application no less than 4 times - so "1 day turn around" quickly escalated to almost 2 weeks.

Lessons learned. Never again.
 
If you’re paying $50/mo. for insurance on a $10k camera you need to shop your gear insurance. My inland marine scheduled policy is less than that for $35k of scheduled gear. When I was just covering the camera, it was like $15/mo.

Also, the insurance requirement was pretty obvious to me when I leased a camera from CFS. It’s also not weird for a leasing company to require insurance on the gear. Even though Canon’s lease is nearly always a purchase, they do still own the gear until you complete the lease.
 
Terry Nixon said:
When you do a lease, you are not buying directly from Texas Media Systems, but from the leasing company.

When you lease finance a camera from Canon, Canon likely has a business office in your state creating a nexus for sales and property taxes.

Texas Media Systems doesn't charge sales tax when we sell directly to buyers located outside Texas. About 99% of our in state customers also do not pay Texas Sales Tax since Texas

Sales Tax Exemptions, full and partial, are offered by many states like Texas, Maryland, California, and New York.

At Texas Media Systems, we typically try to include the appropriate Sales Tax Exemption form for you to sign to submit to the leasing company if available in your state.

To eliminate the insurance fee, you just need to get your insurance agent to add the leasing company as an "Also Insured" to your existing policy.



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Pretty sure there is a Supreme Court case pending which may change a bunch of this (or not) very soon. Specifically
the portion about not charging tax when selling to buyers located outside Texas.
 
Here in europe the insurance when opting out on getting your own resulted in a 10euro add-on in lease costs/month. and even then you got up to a year to provide them with your own insurance details and the add-on 10 euro/month would be refunded.
All of this clearly explaned in a letter (no fine print) when the contract is finalized.
Before starting the lease i did a quick google search as there are two types of lease here and as a result was informed about the demand of equipment insurance, so no surprises here.
 
alaskacameradude said:
Pretty sure there is a Supreme Court case pending which may change a bunch of this (or not) very soon. Specifically
the portion about not charging tax when selling to buyers located outside Texas.
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The pending case concerns South Dakota law, so that's the only state that will face an immediate impact after the ruling.

Depending on the outcome (due by end of June) states may follow suit with similar legislation of their own, but that will take time to implement. My guess is 2019, if at all. There is an outside chance of retroactive taxation which I think would hit the camera community particularly hard as I see tons of comments about buying "tax free" from B&H/Adorama -- those sites will be the first targeted if states get the opportunity.
 
I believe I read that if approved, SD would not go after retroactive tax money, it would just be moving forward. If states are allowed and do start collecting taxes from out of state purchases and decided to go after retroactive tax money, there could be a lot of people in serious trouble, probably a lot of people could literally be bankrupted, depending on how far back they would, or would be allowed to, go. I have no idea what, if any, "statute of limitations" apply to things like that. For IRS audits, they can only go back six or eight years max, at least personally.
 
Run&Gun said:
I believe I read that if approved, SD would not go after retroactive tax money, it would just be moving forward. If states are allowed and do start collecting taxes from out of state purchases and decided to go after retroactive tax money, there could be a lot of people in serious trouble, probably a lot of people could literally be bankrupted, depending on how far back they would, or would be allowed to, go. I have no idea what, if any, "statute of limitations" apply to things like that. For IRS audits, they can only go back six or eight years max, at least personally.
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SD's legislation will not be retroactive, correct. This would only potentially happen if other states decide to implement it.

As of right now, retroactive taxation is constitutionally permissible. As far as how back they can go, there's no hard number. The standard is set forth in United States v. Carlton. If you're interested, this is a pretty good writeup: https://www.bna.com/carlton-us-supreme-n73014450390/ The TLDR is that if it happens there will be a lot of lawsuits because the law isn't particularly clear outside of saying "you can do this."
 
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