Confused about Abesofmaine. So far I give them a 4 out of 5

[w1ljmm]

So here is the deal. I have been doing my research on where to buy quality lenses for my Canon Xsi, at a good price. I always research the companies to verify their ratings with past customers. I liked the pricing for "ables of maine" and recently noticed that their rating was improving. I thought that this would be the time to purchase a lens from them.
I need an assortment of lenses, but did not want to chance losing too much money if the purchase went sour. So on 02/25/09 I bought a Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX DG HSM prime lens on the web. The price was decent and I was able to find a promo coupon to save $10.00 and another 2.5% going thru live.com. Fingers crossed, I waited. What I was not expecting was to receive the lens the very next day. This is a great lens. I was very please with the speed of shipping. Today I called the Sigma Corporation to validate the serial number. They told me that it was a good serial number and the lens was not gray market. I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that because Abesof maine is a true authorized dealer of Sigma products, my warranty is not 1 year, but 4 years. I will keep you posted on my review of this lens and any other lens I might by from abesofmaine. Please continue your postings of your purchases and Customer Service experiences. It helps everyone in the long run. Also post your reviews on www.resellerratings.com and www.bizrate.com THANK-YOU all for your feed back.:thumbsup:

[ckresge]

I have purchased through Abe's twice with mixed results. So I might go 3 or 3.5 out of 5, though it's been a little while since I last went with them. One order - a point and shoot that I bought by going to pricegrabber first - was shipped pretty quickly and arrived fine. Price was good, not great. The second order was for Athena speakers, and it took forever to get the product. I got a bit of a run-around... to me it was clear they weren't stocking the speakers themselves or were having another business or distributor ship the speakers and there was some kind of stock problem. I just wanted a straight forward answer and never got one. Had they just told me it was going to take 2 weeks, I might have been okay with it all. But I didn't get that, and so it left a bad taste. I have yet to go back. There's just too many options out there. Maybe I'll give them another try down the road.