Originally posted by k22 Bought a bunch of old lenses on the famous auction site. All were duds. Even though listed as "perfect", "no fungus", "excellent", "works good", blah, blah, blah. Anybody have success?
I very rarely have any problems, and when I do I usually know it is a calculated risk going in because the listing is lazy or whatever -- and the price or possibility of return usually justifies the risk. You have to evaluate/research the seller -- the listing making promises doesn't mean anything without an honest and conscientious seller behind it. (Those with over-hyped descriptions usually are not.)
Some people know nothing at all and you're not going to get them to answer questions properly either. ("estate find -- I know nothing about lenses"). Others are just high-volume sellers (pawn shops and the like) and they don't care about anything. ("Looks good, it is old, if you are picky go away").
And then there are good sellers that know what they are looking at, will answer questions, usually will take returns, and have 100% positive feedback in most cases (and when they don't you can usually tell if they are the buyer was being the jerk). I honestly really don't know why some people seem to have so much trouble, as separating the good from the bad from the unknown seems pretty obvious most of the time. (Although takes some experience I guess, but really I haven't had much trouble at all and having been dealing with ebay for almost 20 years now -- god that makes me feel old.) And you can protect yourself by only going with sellers that offer returns (even when they don't Ebay & PayPal will usually take your side as buyer and you can get a refund anyway in the case of deception or item not as promised), or where the price is right, etc. It would be interesting to see what listings you've had trouble from.
(I've sold lots of lenses there also with no complaints.)