Anyone buy from BB List before?

[Raymond Zrike]

Talking about this site: https://www.bblist.co.uk . I don't have much experience with it besides making a few offers, but it looks like I might be making a purchase from someone on there soon. Anyone have any good/bad experience with the site? I'm in the US and had only heard about it last year--don't know how common the site is in Europe. The payment system confuses me a bit, so I'll have to look into that, but if it's got similar buyer protection to eBay (which I am a fan of unlike a lot of people), then all's good.

[David Sekanina]

It's an escrow. The buyer will be paid automatically after 48 hours of you receiving the goods unless you complain. You only have 24 hours to examine the goods, and cancel the transaction if there is a discrepancy in the description of the goods by the seller, and what you actually received. This is very short for film cameras, if you want to do a steadiness test, have it developed and scanned within 24 hours. They have a youtube video explaining it:

 

[Mark Dunn]

No problems here buying a splicer.

I've also had an item on offer there for a decade or more- it is a bit specialised though- 6x6 filters that actually are 6x6. 

I suspect it works rather better in Europe, but it's always had international listings,, so who knows. I don't think the payment protection can be compared with ebay's, though.

Edited September 9, 2022 by Mark Dunn

[Raymond Zrike]

1 hour ago, David Sekanina said:

It's an escrow. The buyer will be paid automatically after 48 hours of you receiving the goods unless you complain. You only have 24 hours to examine the goods, and cancel the transaction if there is a discrepancy in the description of the goods by the seller, and what you actually received. This is very short for film cameras, if you want to do a steadiness test, have it developed and scanned within 24 hours. They have a youtube video explaining it:

 

Holding the money in escrow works for me, but it’s still got to be a trusted service since they seem to be the ones managing the escrow, not an outside company. I just wanted to see if people had had any successful or unsuccessful transactions on the site.

24 hours is definitely not very long. I don’t intend to buy a film camera with them—I agree, that isn’t long enough to do any reals test. I’m looking at purchasing a lens. I think I should be able to make sure the lens is up to the seller’s stated condition standard within 24 hours I think. At this point I’ve seen enough busted lenses to recognize fungus, haze, etc haha. Though typically I drop off lenses I’ve just purchased at AbelCine for a thorough look over (they unfortunately take about 3-4 days).

[Raymond Zrike]

7 minutes ago, Mark Dunn said:

No problems here buying a splicer.

I've also had an item on offer there for a decade or more- it is a bit specialised though- 6x6 filters that actually are 6x6. 

I suspect it works rather better in Europe, but it's always had international listings,, so who knows.

Good to hear. It’s an odd site that’s seemingly not remotely been modernized over the years, but as long as it’s not a long-standing scam, it seems like I’m probably good to go ahead with the purchase.

[Mark Dunn]

1 minute ago, Raymond Zrike said:

good to go ahead with the purchase.

I would say so.

BBlist has been around for a long time so I would trust the escrow system as such. Indeed I have, as a buyer. Also, I gather UK and EU consumer protection is much stronger than in the US- businesses and individuals know that and make their decisions accordingly.