I'm interested in buying a Canon 200/1.8 lens. The ebay seller "chamcamera" has 3 listed on ebay and has sold a bunch in the past. He is based in South Korea. Has anybody bought a lens from this person ?
I would be extremely cautious of anyone wanting to get paid by wire transfer and/or using an escrow service. That always throws up red flags for me. I personally wouldn't want to buy a high dollar item on e-bay, let alone one with those kind of conditions. Once you wire that money...there's no turning back! But it's your choice. Can you afford to throw away that kind of money? Be patient and find one you can hold in your hands. Or wait till one comes up here, as they do occasionally, and then research!
Best of luck to you, and Merry Christmas,
Randy
I haven't actually purchase anything from that seller, nor have I actually used escrow or wire transfer, but from what I understand there is a big difference between the two. Basically, wire transfer is much more risky than escrow.
With escrow, a third party essentially "holds" the money until every party is happy (i.e., you get your lens/product), then the money is released to the seller. Again, I don't have experience if actually doing this, but sold a bass guitar amp recently to a guy in New Zealand and we discussed using the escrow option. We ended up going with Paypal and everything worked out fine.
If you're gonna do eBay, I'd strongly suggest buying from someone in the states and make sure they have perfect or near perfect feedback.
Escrow scams are rampant! Don't use one that isn't verified independently. Do a whois on the web site and see how long it has been established. You can check this link for verified ones as well as scam sites:
I have been looking for this lens and I checked out the seller. It appears that he has sold several of these items (200mm 1.8 lens). My only problem with this item would be that if you use escrow, you have to pay the sellers fees as well. That sucks! The fees at www.escrow.com would be .85% of the closing price which would be $120 for a $2000 lens. The sellers fees for the international wire transfer would be $40. The total for a $2000 lens would be $2,245 ($2,000 lens + $120 escrow fee + $85 S/H and $40 sellers fee). It looks like you can use a credit card at escrow.com, so if there was a dispute, you could dispute the charge.
I would contact Conor Lee (a Fred Miranda member). He gets these from time to time. I've had the chance to meet him and know he's legit. See the following for contact and background info:
Actually I bit the bullet and picked one up through him using an escrow service, and was totally happy with the transaction. It arrived quickly, and could be traced right to my door. Extremely well packaged too. He is a completely trustwothy seller from my experience, and if you check his feedback, he's got a lot of happy customers...though I cant imgine where one finds so many 1.8's. Can't see into the future of others who buy from him, so consider this anecdotal!
I dont know about you in US, but here in europe, we prefer to do wire transfer to banks than using escrow services. Most of the scam in europe uses escrow service. With wire transfer, since it uses bank account, it is more traceable coz ALL account is confirmed by banks. They send you something at least once a month, and if it is returned or the person moves, then the account can be closed or the bank freeze the account. It happen once to my friend when he moved and too late in informing the bank.
For shipping, always use trackable services like UPS or FedEx.
If you check out his feedback, it looks like he has sold (and is still selling) many of these lenses... While that positive feedback is a good indicator, where the heck did he get so many identical lenses
