Buying lens on Ebay
- Thread starter Monomoy
- Start date
David G. Smith
Steak Knife Member
I have had very good experiences buying used lenses off of eBay. If you stick with sellers with decent feedback numbers then most transactions on eBay are pretty straight forward. If you use PayPal and eBay and you do have bad experience, they do have a dispute resolution system and while I have never had to use it I do like that it is there. Buyer Beware is still alive and well but I think that eBay has done a lot to tame it a little bit.
Be very skeptical. If you have no morals, and don't mind buying stolen or cloned property, go for it.
Notice the cheap ones are all coming from China or Korea. The B&H priced ones are coming from Japan. Also notice that some of the sellers pitch the lens as 'Genuine Panasonic' as though there was a question that it was not genuine.
However, there can be substantial market price differences for products and it could be legit. But I doubt it.
There are lots of fakes of other video equipment such as Sennheiser G3 and Sony headphones.
Notice the cheap ones are all coming from China or Korea. The B&H priced ones are coming from Japan. Also notice that some of the sellers pitch the lens as 'Genuine Panasonic' as though there was a question that it was not genuine.
However, there can be substantial market price differences for products and it could be legit. But I doubt it.
There are lots of fakes of other video equipment such as Sennheiser G3 and Sony headphones.
I bought from people with a feedback of around 95 before, everything was fine. Read the negative feedback, if people are saying they got ripped off don't do business with them. Sometimes cheeky people will give negative feedback for things out of the sellers control like shipping time and bad communication.
B&H has very high prices too
I do agree with this if it's a seller who is not a professional. If he has sold a few things and bought a lot and has receive one negative feedback, that could set him way back and yes, it could very well be the buyer's fault.
iancarlson3000
Member
I bought one of these. It doesn't come with a box or even lens caps I believe, just packing material. Optically, mine is fine but I did find a spec of dust inside the element.
Most of these places do have a return policy so if you're on top of checking the lens right away when you get it then I think you'll be fine.