[Fenwoodian]

Are we still able to report a fraudulent listing. I would expect that sort of thing would qualify.


Steve

In the last year I'll bet that I've reported 6 0r 8 listings that looked fraudulent to me. Ebay never did anything about any of them.

[Fenwoodian]

Funny, my experience has been just the opposite. Over the past 2 years I've purchased 14 lenses including 15-30, 24-70 2.8, 70-200 2.8 and others, from eBay and all of them have been perfect or damn near so.

I guess YMMV.

I should have mentioned in my original post, that the average price of these lenses was $40 - $60 USD. The lenses you listed are obviously much more expensive (and much never too).

However, just because lenses are inexpensive is no excuse to hide defects from potential buyers.

One seller even sent me the lens in a thinly padded envelope. I could not believe it. When confronted about it, he said that he didn't think it was worth the extra postage for him to properly ship this inexpensive lens in a box.

[lytrytyr]

Adorama has a pretty good reputation from what I know.

After they sent me an expensive brand new Q lens with inadequate packing,
so the Ricoh box arrived all crumpled,
I exercised my free-market choice and switched to their NYC competitor.

[btnapa]

but I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced something like this:

Something similar happened to me. I bought a brand new on camera trigger and found out that there was a newer version of the same trigger. So, I called them up and asked to have the new one. I packed the old item and sent it back at my expense. I have had similar situations in the past with B&H and they picked up the cost of return shipping!. No big deal, my mistake so I paid for it. Here is the similarity to your situations. After waiting for ground shipping to go back and for ground shipping to come back to me (two week wait), I found out that they had shipped the exact unit I had sent to them for replacement. I thought I had made a mistake in the RMA paper work. I went back and checked. I had indeed asked for a newer version. So I called them up to see what was going on. The lady was very apologetic and offered a two day free shipping of the new item. The order was on a Friday. So the item did not get to me until next Wednesday. Three weeks to get an item right!

---------- Post added 06-20-19 at 04:39 AM ----------

inadequate packing,

They shipped my item in a bubble envelope too. I got lucky that UPS did not crush my envelope. To be fair, B&H does some stupid stuff of their own. I have had plenty of small items shipped in gigantic shipping boxes without adequate padding. I get the big box and the smaller box is being thrown around inside!

[clackers]

I'm a bit disgusted reading these stories, to be honest.

My fault for thinking better of retailers, I guess.

[Wheatfield]

I'm a bit disgusted reading these stories, to be honest.

My fault for thinking better of retailers, I guess.

With the volumes these places do, it's no surprise there are a few burps from time to time.
People with a beef are more likely to complain than people with no complaints saying good things, and when people do say good things, there is always the person who will accuse the happy camper of being a shill.
The game is extremely biased towards the very small percentage of people with a complaint getting a very outsized share of the oxygen.

The company I work for has a customer survey available to everyone who makes a purchase. Just go on the website and log in using information on the bill of sale.
The really important metric for them is a question that asks how likely is the customer to shop with us again.
There are 5 options ranging from never to definitely.
5 out of 5 (definitely will shop again) is a pass.
4 out of 5 (probably will shop again) is a fail.
In this sort of environment, retailers are setting themselves and their staff up to fail.

[lesmore49]

The company I work for has a customer survey available to everyone who makes a purchase. Just go on the website and log in using information on the bill of sale.
The really important metric for them is a question that asks how likely is the customer to shop with us again.
There are 5 options ranging from never to definitely.
5 out of 5 (definitely will shop again) is a pass.
4 out of 5 (probably will shop again) is a fail.
In this sort of environment, retailers are setting themselves and their staff up to fail.

I agree. A large auto manufacturer has a survey sent to customers about how the car company's dealer staff performed, that you as the customer dealt with , when your vehicle was being serviced.

My understanding it that only 10 out of 10 is acceptable. I don't think that is a valuable survey and all it does is make the dealer staff paranoid that they're not going to get a 10 out of 10. As a result, some customers will automatically give the staff a 10 out of 10 as they don't want to affect their job.

[Wheatfield]

I agree. A large auto manufacturer has a survey sent to customers about how the car company's dealer staff performed, that you as the customer dealt with , when your vehicle was being serviced.

My understanding it that only 10 out of 10 is acceptable. I don't think that is a valuable survey and all it does is make the dealer staff paranoid that they're not going to get a 10 out of 10. As a result, some customers will automatically give the staff a 10 out of 10 as they don't want to affect their job.

What we've been instructed to do is ask customers that we are sure will fill out the survey "correctly" to do the survey, and not mention it at all to customers that we are not sure about.
I have heard of employees padding the results by purchasing a candy bar or a drink and then going online and doing the resulting survey.

[lesmore49]

What we've been instructed to do is ask customers that we are sure will fill out the survey "correctly" to do the survey, and not mention it at all to customers that we are not sure about.
I have heard of employees padding the results by purchasing a candy bar or a drink and then going online and doing the resulting survey.

No surprise. Our bank usually 'surveys' us via phone, after we meet with our financial planner. The questions seem to be designed to 'corral' the customer to the 'right' answer that the CEO wants...cumulatively.. for their shareholder meetings and annual report.

[MarkJerling]

I'm a bit disgusted reading these stories, to be honest.

My fault for thinking better of retailers, I guess.

I've bought from Adorama a number of times now and I've never had anything but excellent service.
B&H too. Very good to deal with.

(When you're in New Zealand there's not many options for buying Pentax locally.)

[rogerstg]

My measure of a company is how they handle errors or misunderstandings. For Adorama, I bought a used DA* 50-135 from them via Amazon. The lens arrived without a lens hood. I contacted them, explained the situation and asked them to "please advise." I didn't demand anything, however I received a new hood in the mail several days later.

That's pretty good in my book.

[Take-5-JB]

Without reviewing all of my purchases over the last 10-12 years, I have purchased 3 Pentax cameras, new and used lenses, tripod, flashes, lenses filters, and shutter releases from Adorama and never had an issue. I just purchased a DA*300 f4 Pentax lens from them in the last month. I use AdoramaPix also.

JB

[Not a Number]

The simplest explanation is somebody just goofed - put the wrong barcode sticker on the wrong box or the wrong box in the wrong bin. And customer service reps are often trained not to show surprise and certainly not anger.

[Wheatfield]

My measure of a company is how they handle errors or misunderstandings. For Adorama, I bought a used DA* 50-135 from them via Amazon. The lens arrived without a lens hood. I contacted them, explained the situation and asked them to "please advise." I didn't demand anything, however I received a new hood in the mail several days later.

That's pretty good in my book.

A sea turtle can run a company when everything is going right. As you say, the true test of a company is how they handle things when it goes sideways. I would prefer to hear more stories about how things resolved. Far to often, the internet forum is the first resort of the aggrieved customer. We get to hear about what a bunch of screw ups some company is because of some minor error causing a First World disaster in someone's life, but we never get to hear about how the problem resolved because all someone wanted to do was whinge about what a bad world it is because people aren't perfect.

[csa]

I agree; it would be nice to hear the complete story, beginning to end.