Canon 18-135mm f3.5-5.6 IS STM for $229 (white box/grey)

Comments

1. S. W. Anderson says

   January 25, 2016 at 12:23 am

   Nice lens at a very nice price. The same lens refurbished at Canon’s online store goes for $439. The one offered here is undoubtedly gray market and subject to Canon’s international warranty The eBay page does include the option to get a Square Trade three-year warranty for $35. If I was going for this deal, I’d probably add the Square Trade warranty.

   Interestingly, Getitdigital has a similarly good price on the 55-250 IS STM, again with no mention of manufacturer or dealer warranty on the eBay page, and no Square Trade offer either. Ahem. Bottom of the page offering the 18-135, they say if there’s no mention of warranty at the top of the page, contact them to ask.

   • 1001nc says

     January 25, 2016 at 11:55 am

     If retailers in general were just more clear about Grey/Imported items and Broken Kits / White Box items, they would have more sales and more happy customers. They can’t measure how many sales they lose from people who are not sure what they are looking at, so they are probably not very motivated to fix it. Certainty can help people make decisions. Otherwise they’ll just pass it on or say “later”.
2. S.W. Anderson says

   January 25, 2016 at 2:36 pm

   I agree that sellers who offer these deals have no idea how many sales they might be losing. Just saying “contact us” is off putting to prospective customers, too. They wonder why, with all the information, terms and conditions listed on the page, a few words about something as potentially important to them as warranty coverage wasn’t included in the first place. Something the dealer would rather not make clear, perhaps?

   When a seller includes a Square Trade warranty price and link, it tells me, “Here’s your way to get a problem taken care of without having to ship the item to Thailand, Taiwan or Shanghai and maybe have to wait weeks, then get an international money order, or something like that, to get the item fixed or replaced if the company says the problem was caused by you, or that it’s not covered by the warranty.” It also tells me the seller doesn’t want to offer a dealer warranty due to lack of repair capability and/or uncertainty about how good the quality control is for items intended for foreign markets.

   That said, I’ve bought a few gray market items, with or without a third-party warranty, without having any problems. I tend to strongly favor manufacturer refurbished items, especially those offered by the manufacturer through its own outlet. I’ve bought quite a few things that way over the past 15 years or so (computers and monitors included) with good savings and no disappointments.

   • 1001nc says

     January 25, 2016 at 3:40 pm

     yeah, it’s a question of trade-offs and risk tolerance and per item risks and resallability and things like that. A numbers game with gut feeling factors and a dash of Murphy’s Law 🙂