Lemon Olympus on eBay

mcorax · May 10, 2006

If you intend to bid on an OM-2, stay away from of this one.

The camera has several major dings that they concealed altogether the first (?) time around, but now they show two of those although not as they really are. More important, this camera also has a light leak connected to the big ding at the center rear of the bottom plate.

In the auction listing they state:

Film Back Gasket Condition: Good
(there is a light leak)

Battery: This item comes with a battery which is fully operational.
(the camera arrived with no batteries)

Automatic Film Advance: The camera has a fully operable Auto Advance utility for ease of use.
(this is a manual camera, there is no such feature)

Zoom: The Zoom feature was successfully tested.
(What zoom? It is listed with a 50mm prime!)

I won this camera two weeks ago and promptly returned it because it was grossly misrepresented. They accepted a return but kept insisting on charging me a "handling fee" and that I should pay return shipping. When I tried to reason with them, they got very arrogant and unresponsive.

Finally, it took them four days after receiving the package and a lot of prodding to finally issue a refund. Minus that "handling fee". All in all, a very unpleasant experience and a merchant to stay away from.

Regards,

Marko

Brac · May 12, 2006

If you are not satisfied with an item purchased on ebay there is always the option to use the Dispute Consol to "Report an Item Not Received or Not as Described". If you paid by PayPal they have a somewhat similar process.

Gay Larson · May 12, 2006

thanks for letting us know so no one on APUG get's taken a second time. Of course if the price is low enough and you need it, you could buy it for parts. You would need to know the defects though.

Dan Fromm · May 12, 2006

Brac said:
If you are not satisfied with an item purchased on ebay there is always the option to use the Dispute Consol to "Report an Item Not Received or Not as Described". If you paid by PayPal they have a somewhat similar process.

Have you ever used eBay's or PayPal's dispute resolution service?

I have, and I've found both pretty useless. Item not as described, vendor in the UK refused to refund shipping charges or pay for return shipping from the US and wanted me to pay his listing fee too. No support for me from eBay or PayPal, I gather they took it to be a pissing match among skunks.

cdholden · May 12, 2006

mcorax said:
Automatic Film Advance: The camera has a fully operable Auto Advance utility for ease of use.
(this is a manual camera, there is no such feature)

Zoom: The Zoom feature was successfully tested.
(What zoom? It is listed with a 50mm prime!)

According to the auction description, both the Automatic Advance *AND* the Manual Advance passed their strict testing requirements.
All this time I've been piddling with Canon's manual advance! Why didn't anyone tell me Oly has both?
Chris
p.s. prime zoom = your feet

mcorax · May 12, 2006

Dan Fromm said:
Have you ever used eBay's or PayPal's dispute resolution service?

I have, and I've found both pretty useless.

This was my first time and, given how everybody dismisses their claim process, I was dumbfounded how quickly and efficiently PayPal handled the claim!

I had a very lively and "frank" exchange with their customer service in which they told me how little chance I had to get that "service fee" refunded and I told them equally lively what will happen if I don't.

In the end, I didn't. So I filed a partial refund claim with PayPal in the afternoon, and in the morning the remaining refund was already offered (part of the procedure) and accepted.

mcorax · May 12, 2006

cdholden said:
According to the auction description, both the Automatic Advance *AND* the Manual Advance passed their strict testing requirements.
All this time I've been piddling with Canon's manual advance! Why didn't anyone tell me Oly has both?
Chris
p.s. prime zoom = your feet

And it works too, the prime zoom I mean... ;-)

The reason why I started this thread was not to complain, or even to vent, but to warn other people off of that particular camera and that outfit in general.

They have relisted the camera again, still saying that "Film Back Gasket condition" was good.

Lee L · May 12, 2006

Brac said:
If you are not satisfied with an item purchased on ebay there is always the option to use the Dispute Consol to "Report an Item Not Received or Not as Described". If you paid by PayPal they have a somewhat similar process.

Ebay owns PayPal.

Lee

gnashings · May 13, 2006

cdholden said:
...p.s. prime zoom = your feet

HA! How do THEY know wether MY feet work well, huh?!

Ed Sukach · May 13, 2006

I too tried the Dispute Resolution" process - a Gossen MultiBeam Attachment I "won" was never shipped. After a massive amount of wrangling, all I managed to receive from the vendor was a copy of a Post Office receipt for insurance indicating *something* had been sent to an address in Illinois (I'm in Massachusetts), and the declaration that, therefore, everything was MY problem. Messages to eBay, the Government and whoever else was listed on eBay produced exactly NOTHING - nada, zilch.

Fortunately (for me - not for the swindler on the other end) my wife has worked in the Mastercard Department of my local bank for 27 years ... and when let loose, went to work with Mastercard. I'll SWEAR these people have a language known only to them - and after twenty minutes or so a "chargeback" had been successfully executed - removing the amount charged to my Mastercard account from his - wherever he had it.

What was most satisfying was the immediate response from this #$@!! - a flood of "You can't DO this to me!!" messages. I happily responded: "Oh yes I CAN, and DID".

I stay away from using eBay. My success/ failure record there has been close to 50/50... and I'm not quite THAT dedicated to gambling.

Anyone so troubled should talk to the people at their bank who administer their credit cards. They are probably the most effective "conflict negotiators".

Bob F. · May 13, 2006

Ed Sukach said:
Anyone so troubled should talk to the people at their bank who administer their credit cards. They are probably the most effective "conflict negotiators".

Always pay by credit card! Do not pay by cheque or allow Paypal to debit your bank account.

I had to get a chargeback against Paypal after 3 days and 14 emails resulted in nothing more than circular "keep the mug spinning around in circles and he'll give up eventually" treatment from them. The amount? 1 GBP...

Cheers, Bob.

Gay Larson · May 13, 2006

I can't tell you how awful it was when paypal debited my checking account twice for a payment. I caught it within 5 minutes and called paypal and their response was too bad, contact the seller and get your money back. Luckily the seller was great and responded right away but paypal did not even after the seller recended one of the payments and it resulted in overdrafts on my account. Luckily my bank was understanding and gave me back most of the money. It took two weeks for paypal to release the amount back into my account. I try never to have my bank account debited but you have to be careful because it automatically comes up first. Once taken shame on them, twice taken shame on me, so I will be extra careful from now on.

Tony Egan · May 14, 2006

I recently used eBay's dispute resolution process successfully. After 6 weeks of polite but increasingly forceful emails to the seller I filled in the online form and had my money back within 7 days ($60 worth of 4x5 film holders). He was a high volume seller so perhaps it was easier to garnishee proceeds from his other sales?

Unfortunately I embarrassed myself by clicking on the wrong Paypal payment numbers and initially reported David Goldfarb instead of the bad guy! I had bought something from David via Paypal at about the same time and the items were adjacent in my paypal history.

Lesson learned: I got interrupted while filling in the form and it timed out. Second time around I was annoyed and hastily made a wrong selection. It is also very easy to withdraw a dispute I also quickly discovered!

This has been my only bad experience with eBAY in about 4 years of buying and selling - admittedly in low volumes.

Tony

John Hermanson · May 19, 2006

There's an awful lot of camera product like this on the bay, some people opt to get them fixed up, others are lucky enough to get refunds.

John

Lemon Olympus on eBay

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