The new condition Canon 24-105mm f4L IS USM EF lens goes for $1000 at authorized dealers, bundled with a handful of lens-y accessories, eg Adorama (filters, cleaning kit, tether, lens shade, Corel software bundle).
But if you want to pay almost half of that, you can get it in manufacturer refurbished condition with a 1-year warranty at the official Canon USA store for $540 with free standard US shipping. You can almost buy two for the price of one!
PS: I wonder how authorized dealers feel when the manufacturer undercuts them dramatically in price, while at the same time the manufacturer places strict restrictions on what prices authorized dealers can offer. Sounds -opoly-ish to me but I’m not an expert in this field, just a bloviator with a keyboard 🙂
I suspect many an allegedly refurbed item such as this was taken back from dealers, or was part of a canceled order from a dealer, because the items aren’t moving and the dealers are tired of carrying them through one inventory after another. Or, maybe because a new, improved iteration of whateveritis is in the offing. Dealers can’t (or won’t?) mark them down enough to move them out, and probably realize many people are buying lower-priced ones that are gray-market, open-box or used on eBay or Amazon. Rather than cut dealers loose on price, some manufacturers take them back, re-box them as refurbs and sell them through their own refurb outlet. Other manufacturers probably auction them off in lots to third-party sellers, some online, some offline, some both.
(I know I’ve opine on this before, but couldn’t help myself.)
On another matter, I went for the recent Monoprice closeout of the Tamron non-IS 18-200mm closeout lens for Canon. Only $99, but down to $86 with code. Got a shipping date five days later. On that date, and only by checking the status at Monoprice, I learned the shipping date had been pushed to four days later. Four days later I got an e-mail stating the order was canceled and could not be reordered. Same day, got a “sorry ’bout that” e-mail that assured me how important the manager considers every order, etc. etc. Also got notice refund went through.
OK, things can happen. However, I feel the transaction could’ve and should’ve halted when the seller’s system had inventory for that item at zero. Or, failing that, I should’ve been notified the following day. Being strung out for days on end with delayed shipping dates and (obviously, in this case) selling products the seller doesn’t have to sell, are lousy ways to do business and great ways to lose customers.
Update: Out of curiosity, I just took a look at Monoprice. Same lens they told me was out of stock, discontinued and could not be reordered is still listed on their all-in-one zoom lenses page and closeout pages. Maybe they canceled my order because I applied a legitimate code that brought the price down to $86, and Monoprice wouldn’t let the lens go for that. That is, even though Monoprice set the sale price and issued the discount code.
If you click on those links, you’ll get empty pages though. Their promotional pages are not updated based on real-time inventory like Amazon where things disappear when they sell out. They are still discovering how to do things Amazon figured out many years ago. The only live Tamron lens I can find on their website is the open box Tamron 70-200 for Canon.
Ah so. All I can say is, they’re not doing themselves any favors by not staying on top of their own Web pages. Updating isn’t that hard and doesn’t take that much time. It probably takes less time and trouble than notifying customers, belatedly, that what the customers ordered isn’t coming and refunding their money.
yeah, they are still in their early stages. They started with selling budget cables, they probably expanded too fast without internally adjusting to the growth. Tamron lenses was a rather unusual thing for them to carry since they are more of a specialty photographic item, not something that the average person would look for if buying camera gear online.