[Konvas] About Anatoliy Pleshko

[Peter Haas]

On Jul 23, 2009, at 6:25 PM, vonat8 at verizon.net wrote:

> I've bought from him a couple of times.  Nothing I bought was  
> broken, although none of it was in great condition either.  The  
> financial transactions were convoluted and a big hassle: he  
> insisted on being paid by bank transfers, which cost me money and  
> time and were very, very slow.  He does seem to have a treasure  
> trove of stuff there, though.
>
> You're right about the canvas bag thing--it seemed to be standard  
> procedure from some FSU countries, though I haven't received one of  
> those sewn-into-a-bag parcels in a few years.

All the above is pretty much spot-on.

I once bought a complete set of brand-new primes in a fitted foam  
hard-case.

When the parcel, stitched as described, arrived, all the lenses were  
found to have banged together again and again during shipment as the  
foam had completely disintegrated.

None of the lenses were usable without extensive, and expensive repairs.

I received what I would consider a reasonable, but not an overly  
generous reduction in price, with the very terse message, "I don't  
want those lenses back, you can keep them".

I have never had them repaired.

I found another complete set of primes from another seller, and at a  
somewhat lower price, too.

Word to the wise: whenever packing for international shipment, any  
foam should be considered to be useless. Pack every item separately  
in bubble wrap, or better. And then pack it again, in bubble wrap. If  
you really DO want the Russian hard-case, then ship it as another  
item within the shipment, with nothing of value contained within it.

I would NOT do another purchase using Western Union wire transfer!