canon dslr without serial on body

[arjerico]

Hello everyone,
I bought a canon 60d on June fron an official retailer in greece, the problem is that i insisted that i wanted a camera with european guarantee. After he convinced me that the camera he sells has a european guarantee i bought it and left.
after 3 months discussing with some friends i realised that the serial is missing fron the body.
I went straight away to the shop and they told that i dont have to worry about anything i have a normal guarrantee.
I told them that i will call canon-europe because i want the serial on the body like all european cameras and after contacting canon i send some photos where eveyone can aunderstand that the serial was never printed there.
Also the serial number on the box dont match with any canon serial and certenly not with the serial tha can be seen on a RAW pic.
Last email from canon saying that my case is forwarded to the anti-counterfeit team
Im still waiting for the answer from canon...
Any help would be appreciated

 

[spacefuzz]

Stolen I would imagine.

 

[KmH]

The seller knew they had an inexperienced consumer and took advantage.

Caveat Emptor

 

[WesternGuy]

Sounds like you got stuck with a knock-off or a stolen camera.

WesternGuy

 

[JohnTrav]

To me it sounds like you got a knock off. Hopefully everything works out and you can either get your money back or something.

 

[Netskimmer]

I didn't even know they made knock off DSLRs. Does it work ok? Is the serial number missing or has it been covered up or removed? Have you compared it to a Canon that you know is genuine?

 

[spacefuzz]

I didn't even know they made knock off DSLRs. Does it work ok? Is the serial number missing or has it been covered up or removed? Have you compared it to a Canon that you know is genuine?

I would be really suprised if they made knock of functional DSLRs. Thats a lot of effort for a scam......

 

[PlanetStarbucks]

I suppose you could buy working lower end models and broken higher end models and swap the parts to resell them. still, seems like a lot of effort. It probably is a stolen item.

 

[sapper6fd]

​

 

[Overread19 7]

I would suspect its not profitable to build a knock-off - esp since Canon and Nikon keep things very in-house. Most knockoffs you see on the market are made by regular factories hired to make the real things as well (they just copy designs as much as they can legally for legal knockoffs -and just outright copy for the illegal ones).

Most of the bad cameras you'll get will be the results of theft - this could be stealing peoples cameras or stealing stock from warehouses/displays etc.. .

 

[sapper6fd]

One sure way of figguring out if it is stolen or not, is to check the shutter count. Find the erliest known photo you took with it and check to see what the shutter count is. If you know the photo youre using to check this was one of the first 50 or so photos taken, and the the sutter count on it is higher than say 100 or so, you know it was stolen (or a Demo model). Check the exif data for the date to make sure it was ony a few days after you bought the camera as well. If you see that the shutter count is in the thousands you know it was stolen or used as demo model.

 

[Overread19 7]

Actually a lot of cameras can have a higher shutter count without being stolen:

1) Tests on batches at the production end (ie before its even out of the factory

2) Demo to a buyer at the shop - not all shops have "demo" stock and thus any camera might be taken out of the box for a few snaps to show a potential customer (heck you might do this yourself right before you buy).

3) Guys in packing tried it out (shouldn't happen but - eh - in the real world it does from time to time).


There are also likely a few more stages which can raise the shutter count on a camera. That said considering that (with a Canon DSLR at least) they don't let you see the actual actuation count from manufacture its a simple few buttons to reset the counter back to 0 and you'd never know.