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Once you’ve seen what’s possibly the World’s most interesting museum of ethnography, the marvellous Pitt Rivers in Oxford, other ethnographic collections may seem rather dull by comparison; but the Budapest Néprajzi Múzeum (Museum of Ethnography) seems to have gone out of it’s way to disappoint.

The terribly polite DK Guide suggests that the Budapest collection is overshadowed by the building in which it’s housed, which is certainly true. Half of one floor is devoted to the permanent exhibition, a collection of artefacts from the last 200 or so years (excepting the period of communist rule).

Particularly concerning is the scant representation of the Roma in Hungary’s national ethnographic collection and as far as I could see absolutely no representation of Hungary’s Jewish population. About one-third of the Jews murdered at Auschwitz came from the enthusiastically collaborating wartime Hungary.

If you would like to take photos inside the museum you’ll be expected to pay a surcharge and then the officious and clearly bored staff inside will invent arbitrary rules such as; no flash; no use of mini tripod; and so on.

A dull museum, whose collection is scandalously incomplete given Hungary’s sometimes unfortunate history.

Helen’s been managing with her Nikon D80 for a few years now but a looming holiday has been the nudge to get her to agree to upgrade to the Nikon D300s. I doubted we’d be able to get it delivered in time but Amazon offered a guaranteed delivery date of 1pm on Friday 16th July, just in time for a last weekend of practising.

Friday 1pm  came and went with no camera. I phoned Amazon. They will look into it.

Saturday morning I phoned Amazon. They will look into it. No alternative delivery date given, website still giving an estimate in the past.

Saturday afternoon,  phoned Amazon. They will look into it.  No alternative delivery date given, website still giving an estimate in the past.

This was just silly. It was a camera I wanted, not Amazon’s excuses so I phoned Jessops, in town. They had 2 D300S Nikon’s in stock. Popped in the car, zoomed into town, bought the camera from a very pleasant sales assistant – who expressed an understandable degree of envy – and zoomed back.

Phoned Amazon, told then I wished to cancel the order and that I wanted my money back.

Sunday morning, phoned Amazon. They had no record of my request to cancel the order, They said they couldn’t cancel the order. They couldn’t tell me when the item would be delivered. They were looking into it. They couldn’t confirm when or if I’d get my money back.

I pointed out that under UK distance-selling law I was perfectly entitled to cancel my order up to 7 days after delivery. The fact that they hadn’t delivered was immaterial.

Phoned Visa. Told them about Amazon. They asked me to fill in a form and return it and then they’ll refund the money and charge Amazon. One up for Visa..

Phoned Amazon. Told them about Visa. They put the phone down one me,

My advice? Just don’t use Amazon if you have a halfway decent alternative. They can’t be trusted and if you have  problem you might well find, as I did, that their customer service is terrible.