The Salvation Army USA review: Received a broken lens but their customer service refused to refund

I won an auction of a “Asahi Kogaku Takumar 100mm F 3.5 Lens” from Salvation Army online website, the original listing described the item as “ Pre-Owned, Good” condition and “ Normal wear and tear with visible signs of use”. But when I received the item on 7/26/2023, the lens was broken. First of all, the aperture blades are all missing, this results the lens can only stay wide open. Their staff obviously didn’t do their job with a proper inspection of the item. Secondly, the zooming was stuck, I cannot zoom in and out, which makes the lens unusable at all. When I tried to zoom the lens, the bottom part of the lens fell apart. I immediately contacted the seller (Salvation Army Anaheim eComm) about the issue, stated the lens was broken when I received it. Their customer service replied and I quote ”Please do not try to fix the problem. We can issue you a return label and a full refund”.

So I used their return label and returned the item on 8/1/2023 with USPS tracking number 9400111206215394018485. They received the return on 8/3/2023, and sent me a message on 8/4/2023 saying “ The item we received was not in the same condition it was sold. The item cannot be accepted for a refund.” Note here, they didn’t even mentioned a partial refund, so basically they tricked me returned a broken item, then saying the item was broken so there’s no refund for it. CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS? What a bunch of shameless people!

I’ve also tried to contact their customer service several times with email replies, but they didn’t reply any of my emails.

SO PLEASE BE AWARE OF THIS [censored]TY WEBSITE! DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THEM UNTIL THEIR MANAGEMENT CAN REALIZE THE ISSUE AND FIRE ALL THESE INCOMPETENT CUSTOMER SERVICE STAFF.