DSLR News

Becoming the victim of a camera buying scam on the Internet could happen to anybody. That’s the message in the below video from prominent photo blogger Steve Huff who fell prey to a scam when he tried to purchase a Canon EOS-1D X Mark II and some L-series Canon lenses on Amazon and ended up with a lot less than he bargained for.

“When I took it out of the shipping box, I knew something was wrong,” Huff says. “My heart fell into my stomach as I felt the weight, looked at the worn box and heard loose items inside.”

While the Canon 16-35mm II f/2.8, 24mm F/1.4 and 50m F/1.4 L-series lenses were in the box, the container for the 1D X Mark II was beaten up and the seal was broken. When he opened the 1D X II box, he found some crumpled instruction manuals, a loose cover and the wrong camera strap. As he dug deeper, he pulled out an 18-55mm kit lens and a Canon Rebel T2i, which came out in 2010, without a cap wrapped loosely in bubble wrap.

Obviously, this was not the flagship Canon DSLR he paid $5,500 for on Amazon.

Huff, who runs Steve Huff Photo, purchased the gear on Amazon but via a third-party seller, which had a high rating. That seems to have been his main mistake.

"The morale of the story is be careful when shopping from third-party sellers on Amazon even if they are fulfilled by Amazon,” Huff says in the below video where he describes everything that happened to him.

There is, however, a happy ending to all of this, which you can see in this follow-up video: