After having a good experience with KEH selling a cheap lens, I decided to sell one of my more expensive lenses to KEH and that was a mistake.
I declined the lowball trade in offer and decided to get my lens back. I made sure to communicate thoroughly for them to return all the original material I had sent.
Upon opening the shipping box, I noticed they had kept the original box and paperwork for the lens and scratched the lens exterior beyond repair. I sent them the pictures and tried to get a response back to no avail.
I stopped buying lenses from them a few years ago. Although I've had some good experiences with them, I've had about 4-5 experiences where their rating for a lens was nothing like what they rated it. They gave me a partial refund for a couple of them but I mailed the products back to them the other times and it ended up costing me a few bucks in the process.
I've had some fairly negative experiences with both MPB and KEH, buying and selling. At this point, I just use the BST forums here. By far the best way to pick up or sell gear.
I bought a camera from KEH over 20 years ago that was internally damaged and I did not figure that out until much later. The camera was unrepairable and $1000 was a significant loss for me at that time.
I'll buy cheap, low-risk products if not available elsewhere, but not lenses or cameras.
While having a bad experience is certainly not out of the realm of possibility, a one post account showing up purely to complain about a specific company is extremely sus.
When they changed ownership awhile back they changed their method for receiving payment when you sold something. Very confusing and required signing off on an agreement which seemed to give away some of your privacy rights. I was not scammed and did get a check after calling them but it left me a bit uneasy.
while both MBP, KEH (and any B&M accepting trade-ins for that matter) have less-than-ideal sales for anyone who has use that kind of service (me included) .. this is the first time i've come across an experience where KEH seems to have went out of their way to displease their customer...which makes absolutely no sense from a business perspective since they've been around since the Stone Age.
RoamingScott wrote:
While having a bad experience is certainly not out of the realm of possibility, a one post account showing up purely to complain about a specific company is extremely sus.
Well, it's not very hard to find many complaints against KEH, examples below: https://www.complaintsboard.com/keh-b153880#complaints
a lot of those are lowball offers or ... and Idk one of them is complaining about trying to trade-in a "never-been-opened" brand new Z6 III...I mean, who does that? and it is true sometimes it takes a week to evaluate a trade-in.. it not unique to KEH..
so I've sold to all of them KEH, MPB, B&H and Adorama... none of them will give you a quote on a gear for the price you can sell privately.. you will have to accept that you take a massive hit in exchange for the convenience.
also, a lot of users want to have it both ways... you can even see it on here on the B&S boards... a lens that looks like complete ass and rate it a 9+ and have the audacity to ask above typical asking/market price... like, are you kidding me?
OP claims that the lens they sent a lens with packaging and when decided to not go ahead with the sale, KEH returns the camera in worse condition "beyond repair" .. I mean, I _guess_ that could happen.. but. come on, that's a bit out there, innit?
Bettyentwor wrote:
After having a good experience with KEH selling a cheap lens, I decided to sell one of my more expensive lenses to KEH and that was a mistake.
I declined the lowball trade in offer and decided to get my lens back. I made sure to communicate thoroughly for them to return all the original material I had sent.
Upon opening the shipping box, I noticed they had kept the original box and paperwork for the lens and scratched the lens exterior beyond repair. I sent them the pictures and tried to get a response back to no avail.
DO NOT USE KEH. THEY ARE SCAMMING CUSTOMERS NOW....Show more →
Did you double check the serial number to make sure that they didn’t mixup their customer’s lenses?
I am local to KEH. If i have to try out a lens, i always go their store but I would never buy from them. i've had far better experience buying and selling to MPB and buying here and ebay.
To be honest, even MPB has complaints but every time I've had an issue with them, the service was top notch. That is where the difference lies with KEH. YMMV
For Europeans, there’s also Kamerastore in Finland. Good service, but of course low quotes if you want to sell gear. I’m also lucky to be in Vienna, where there are three used gear stores.
Coincidentally its been at least 9 years since I've bought from them but the 85mm 1.4G and 300mm 2.8 AF lenses i bought were fine.
More recently I've sold a few small lenses here and there to them because they did buying events about 2 miles from me and I hadn't used the lenses in over a year and wanted the space.
Do anyone here that lived in Atlanta remember Atlanta Photo Supply? Well they were a small photo store that soon was bought out by King Grant(KEH) back in 1980. I have posted my comments in other forums and I will say it again, I will never sell anything else to them. This has happened to me back in the 90's-2000's, when you could go to their physical location in downtown or even mail your stuff to them. They would find some type of way find stuff wrong with the equipment and lowball u.
I’ve yet to receive a lens from KEH that was in lesser condition than they advertised. I won’t sell to them though because it’s always less than you can get selling direct to users on here.
Also posting things like this without receipts is…
If people's opinions are involved to grade an item there is guaranteed variations and missed issues. If it's your job evaluate an item (maybe dozens of items a day?)you naturally treat it much differently then evaluating a single item you just spent you hard earned dollars on.
As another user pointed out just look at FM sale items for that many examples of people's opinions clearly being biased in favor of their gear. FM sales are directly tied to the individual seller so there is more at stake, vs a business where the individuals are hidden behind the name.
So while I am nervous to buy used, it's a gamble and sometimes when you roll the dice you lose.
I have to laugh at people expecting anywhere near normal asking prices on trade in....ummm that's not how any of this works.
And I agree with you on that cause its depreciation value over time. But i have gotten some good stuff whether it be pawnshop, fb marketplace or from forums, due diligence is the best thing to do.
Just last week I bought a teleconverter from them. They shipped the wrong item. Pleasant enough on the phone, but it seems they want to deduct shipping for the return. I left them a note on the return authorization so I will see what happens.
