retroactivity
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I have bought nearly all of my XF lenses (5 of them) used on auctions and had no issues -- they were all as good as new and as sharp as you would want them.
I put in a low bid on a "$1450, buy it now--make an offer" auction on a "pristine" 100-400 and to my surprise, the seller accepted my low ball offer of $1,280.00. I could not believe my luck! I bought with confidence, as I had scored 5 times before and always has this "buyer's satisfaction" guarantee" that if the item is defective in any way they will make it good.
Well, I paid for express shipping so it would come in the day we were leaving for our Florida Vacation so I could take it with me and shoot some birds at the beach. Upon opening the box, the lens was indeed in pristine cosmetic condition -- as if it had never been used. I could not believe my luck!
I bolted it onto my XT2 and started snapping away. AF worked great. When I got in doors to look at the images, they were all soft. That's when I broke out the tripod and removed all other possible user error factors, off, etc while shooting targets with it and my trusty 55-200 scooted closer so the target filled the frame to the same degree as the Xf100-400. At every aperture, the xf100-400 was S-I-G-N-I-F-I-C-A-N-T-L-Y less sharp. You can see some of my posts from a few months ago asking for opinions during my testing. You would never be able to get a bird feather to show up on this thing at any aperture or distance.
So no problem. Buyer's satisfaction guarantee, right? Not so fast. Once the seller refuses to take a return (which he did, even with me offering to reimburse both shippings). give the seller 4 days to contact and say why they don't want to accept a return.
Then on the 5th day, I get an email from a random rep with no last name saying the seller says the lens is fine, and my blurry images I sent mean nothing and I have 3 days to get a signed letter from an authorized Fuji repair facility that the lens is defective and get a repair estimate. there's nothing they can do. Oh, and by the way, I'm not allowed to ship it to the closest NJ Fuji repair facility. It might get damaged in shipping and it would invalidate Ebay's protections policy. I'm supposed to drive it from Florida to New Jersey on my vacation. And in the 14 I had back and forth trying to tell them what they ask is impossible in the time frame given, each of the 14 emails was to a different nameless person. On day 4, the case was closed and no more emails were accepted on the case.
I'm not whining here. It all turned out ok. I sold the lens to a used camera store for $1,200.00. They knew nothing of how sharp this lens was supposed to and just cared that the glass was not scratched and the AF worked.
I'm not sharing this for sympathy. I got off easy and only payed $50 for a learning experience. I'm sharing this so nobody makes the same mistake I did in trusting the Ebay buyers protection. Unless the thing you buy is broken into pieces upon arrival, there is not really any protections for the buyer for something more subjective like buying a bad or decentered copy of a lens. You may not be as lucky and lose more money than I did. From now on, if I do buy from ebay, it will only be from sellers with a return policy, which limits the choices severley, but there it is.
Poscript: I just bought an old cheap legacy 400mm telephoto lens for $300.00 and it's not super sharp but it's actually sharper, smaller and lighter than the decentered xf100-400 I sold. But of course no AF or IS. Not knocking the Fuji cause I know many people here have good copies and love them. But the better part of 2K for a new one is out of my price range.
I put in a low bid on a "$1450, buy it now--make an offer" auction on a "pristine" 100-400 and to my surprise, the seller accepted my low ball offer of $1,280.00. I could not believe my luck! I bought with confidence, as I had scored 5 times before and always has this "buyer's satisfaction" guarantee" that if the item is defective in any way they will make it good.
Well, I paid for express shipping so it would come in the day we were leaving for our Florida Vacation so I could take it with me and shoot some birds at the beach. Upon opening the box, the lens was indeed in pristine cosmetic condition -- as if it had never been used. I could not believe my luck!
I bolted it onto my XT2 and started snapping away. AF worked great. When I got in doors to look at the images, they were all soft. That's when I broke out the tripod and removed all other possible user error factors, off, etc while shooting targets with it and my trusty 55-200 scooted closer so the target filled the frame to the same degree as the Xf100-400. At every aperture, the xf100-400 was S-I-G-N-I-F-I-C-A-N-T-L-Y less sharp. You can see some of my posts from a few months ago asking for opinions during my testing. You would never be able to get a bird feather to show up on this thing at any aperture or distance.
So no problem. Buyer's satisfaction guarantee, right? Not so fast. Once the seller refuses to take a return (which he did, even with me offering to reimburse both shippings). give the seller 4 days to contact and say why they don't want to accept a return.
Then on the 5th day, I get an email from a random rep with no last name saying the seller says the lens is fine, and my blurry images I sent mean nothing and I have 3 days to get a signed letter from an authorized Fuji repair facility that the lens is defective and get a repair estimate. there's nothing they can do. Oh, and by the way, I'm not allowed to ship it to the closest NJ Fuji repair facility. It might get damaged in shipping and it would invalidate Ebay's protections policy. I'm supposed to drive it from Florida to New Jersey on my vacation. And in the 14 I had back and forth trying to tell them what they ask is impossible in the time frame given, each of the 14 emails was to a different nameless person. On day 4, the case was closed and no more emails were accepted on the case.
I'm not whining here. It all turned out ok. I sold the lens to a used camera store for $1,200.00. They knew nothing of how sharp this lens was supposed to and just cared that the glass was not scratched and the AF worked.
I'm not sharing this for sympathy. I got off easy and only payed $50 for a learning experience. I'm sharing this so nobody makes the same mistake I did in trusting the Ebay buyers protection. Unless the thing you buy is broken into pieces upon arrival, there is not really any protections for the buyer for something more subjective like buying a bad or decentered copy of a lens. You may not be as lucky and lose more money than I did. From now on, if I do buy from ebay, it will only be from sellers with a return policy, which limits the choices severley, but there it is.
Poscript: I just bought an old cheap legacy 400mm telephoto lens for $300.00 and it's not super sharp but it's actually sharper, smaller and lighter than the decentered xf100-400 I sold. But of course no AF or IS. Not knocking the Fuji cause I know many people here have good copies and love them. But the better part of 2K for a new one is out of my price range.
