Hey folks,

I have a question about a lens repair situation I'm facing. I think they're trying to sucker me, but there's plenty about lenses I don't know, so I wanted to double check with a community.


The situation is this:

My Canon 85mm f/1.2 took a bit of a spill. A clip failed, and it nose dived. The drop bent the manual focus ring, so it became extemely rough and uneven to tuen-- it had about 1cm of its range which was VERY hard to turn past, but the rst of the range was fine enough, if a little gravelly feeling. Exactly how I would expect it to feel if the ring was both indented and thrown a little out of true.

But everyverything else works. The autofucs works flawlessly, the images are sharp. Even the manual focus works accurately, if unpleasantly. For those unaquainted, the MF on this lens is fly-by-wire: the MF ring has no physical connection to the focus system and controls the fofus by actuating the USM; for this reason, the ring can spin forever around the lens body-- so I know the "rough spot" is JUST a refect with the focus ring, not something 'deeper' in the lens.

So anyway, I count myself lucky that nothing is cracked and send it in to have the ring replaced. Initial estimate is $350, which is about what I expected. A week later I get a call back saying that, no, sorry, it's going to cost $1500 because they need to replace the USM. Of course I said 'heck no'.

My question is this: is it really possible that they need to replace the freakin' USM when its been focusing FLAWLESSLY on auto for a month? And accuratelyon manual, for that matter-- again, it was unpleasant and difficult to use, but the shots were sharp if I slogged through*.

...Or are they trying to take me for a bit of a ride, here?

Like I said, I don't proport to know everything about lenses, so I wanna know if I'm missing something. But it seems to me like they're trying to fix somethin' that ain't broken, and charge me a solid grand for the opportunity.

All thoughts welcome and appreciated.


*{This makes sense, of course, since with this lens AF and MF are just different ways of actuating the same system.}