Lens Warranties "Value"

[krs]

How much "value" is a lens warranty? Do qualitiy lenses that cover "defective materials or workmanship" for periods up to 6 years provide much value, or do lenses typically not go bad except for abuse, accidents, etc.?

This question leads to the idea of purchasing used lenses versus a new one, given the warranty is not transferable...

[sewebster]

Not really an answer to your question but...

I recently sent a lens I had purchased used in for service. I had the original receipt and it was within the warranty period. I think if you have the receipt they're going to have a hard time knowing you bought it used. Anyway, I had sent it in due to some tube wobble/image quality problems and they told me there was "impact damage" so it was not covered under warranty. I knew I hadn't "impacted" anything, but maybe the previous owner did, so I didn't push things and just paid. This of course brought my cost of the lens above the new price.

To make things worse the lens came back not so different from before image quality wise... not a big problem, but perhaps a bit disappointing. If I had been the original purchaser and had not damaged the lens I would have pushed harder to not have to pay for the repairs, but I couldn't really do that in good conscience in my situation. Anyway I think from now on I won't be buying used unless it is a significant discount from the new price. In this case I had paid $275 for a 16-45. I think it was on prodigital2000 for $330 or so the week before.

Hopefully this wouldn't be common on this forum, but I wonder if a lot of used lenses that are a little "off" (eg. slightly poor image quality, but not really repairable) get sold from person to person on the used market. It's possible that the reason the person sold me the lens is that they didn't like the "problem." But it isn't so bad so I basically decided to just forget about it and use the lens.

Uhh, that was way longer than I intended, and somewhat off topic, sorry.

[Sean Nelson]

My opinion is that if you examine a lens and find it to be mechnically and optically sound within the original return window, anything that goes wrong with it is a heck of a lot more likely to be your fault than a manufacturing defect - therefore in practical terms the warranty isn't likely to be as much help.

Cameras are of course a different matter because they're considerably more complex and failures can and do happen.