Am I doomed? (70-200 f/4 lens)

[TooShay]

Okay, without writing a book here, I bought a 70-200 f/4 about a month ago on craigslist (it's used, obviously.) I used the lens a couple of times and then decided that I'd rather have the 2.8 version (which I was originally going to buy... and I'm now currently kicking myself for going this route.) My plan was to sell the lens to re-coop the money to put towards the 2.8. I sold it on Amazon, which is where I've sold several items in the past because I figured it's more secure than craigslist and would probably sell more quickly. So I sold it, shipped it and the day after the buyer received it, he said it was broken and wanted a refund. My first thought was, fine. It's probably not broken, it's probably just buyers remorse and he wants to send it back. Not so much. The lens is really broken. Great! So the buyer is refunded and I'm now the proud owner of a paper weight. The issue: the focus. It won't auto focus OR manual focus. Has anyone heard of that happening? I've never had a piece of equipment die on me so I have no idea what fixing it would entail... I'm going to send it into Canon but I wanted to see if anyone else has dealt with a focus failure/issue with a Canon lens.

 

[Austin Greene]

Get ahold of the shipping company you used. Chances are that if it worked when you shipped it, its their fault that its broken. Some companies like UPS will pay for items they break.

Also, for future notice, its always better to lose an extra 10-20 bucks paying for it to be custom packaged than have a paperweight in the end. The last lens I shipped over amazon had $25 put into packaging and shipping it via a UPS store. It was guaranteed against shipping damage, and that box could have been dropped from a plane and the lens would've still been fine.

Hope it all works out for you!

 

[NickA]

How did you ship it? I think USPS includes $100.00 in some of their shipping methods. It won't cover the cost of the lens, but you can put it towards getting it fixed.

 

[TooShay]

I shipped USPS, priority. I didn't realize that it was the seller's responsibility to pay for insurance. Amazon only reimburses for a specific amount so that's just how I ship (though I always end up spending more to ship it somehow.) The box did look pretty beat up when I got the lens back, but who really knows what could have happened.

 

[Tony S]

You will only recover from the shipping company if there was damage to the package that was noted when it was delivered, if not they are not going to be on the hook for it. Send it off to Canon, the value of that lens is still more than the probably $250 mid range price to get it fixed.

 

[TooShay]

Oh, I'm definitely sending it to Canon. I just wanted to see if anyone else has had the same issue so I could see how expensive this venture is going to be. Especially for a lens that I'm almost never going to use.