One of the old standby golden rules applies VERY well to photography shopping online...


"If it looks too good to be true, it probably is."


It's not uncommon for me to find prices nearly half of what the lens lists for... and every time I do I do a Google search on that companies name only to find hoardes of customers that have been taken by them.


The most common tactics? You order something, they call to 'confirm' your order and try to sell you a bunch of side crap (including things that come WITH the item you are buying) and if you don't bite your ordered item suddenly is out of stock with no word on when they will get it in... but they HAVE charged your card for the item. Then you'll have a hard time trying to cancel your order. At best you'll end up having wasted a bunch of your time.


I don't even bother with anything other then the big boys anymore. Even ebay is useless most the time now, it's turned into an "Outlet" shop on 90% of the listings and the ones that are actually legit auctions people get bid fever and end up paying little under what you would for a new lens.



Yeah, I know I sound a bit jadded about it, which is funny cause I've never been burned... but I really do my research on ANY place I'm ordering from online (I also only use a specific credit card for online ordering with a set limit).