Thoughts/experiences?

Stick with places like fredmiranda.com. Good buy and sell forum, and an established feedback thread you can dig through to find history on a seller.

bought or sold on fredmiranda has been top notch. That's a great community there.

Then if not that, check your local for sale usenet group if one exists. I bought a few stuff found on the toronto forsale usenet.

they have a huge inventory of lenses and bodies at different levels of prices/condition. i've been on other photography forums and people love KEH cause even "bargain" gear are in great shape.

they also have a 15 day no questions asked return policy which is pretty hard to find from a local store. i personally haven't bought from them (but i'm planning on trying them out for a 80-200mm f2.8 or a 300mm f4), but people have great feedback from them.

what type of lens are you looking for?

at least for me....
ebay is overpriced....

for example, i wanted a nice 35mm prime other then my already 35L
I wanted to buy a nice normal (for 1.6X) lens.
I looked into 35 f2 and checked that it was like 290 new 275 on ebay (used) and 250 at adorama as a used item.
I ran into Adorama and grabbed it.... people oversaturate ebay (esp. Europeans) and make is super expensive.

I sold many many Nikon lenses on e-bay for more then what i paid for them at B&H. (kinda makes you think of a business)
the 70-200VR and 10.5 Fisheye come to mind that i sold like $50 above what i paid after using them professionaly at few events on my Fujis.

ebay is plagued with uninformed buyers who think it's the only place to get any gear for less than list prices. Subsequently, most items are bid far too high for used gear.

A place like FM is expensive for used gear, but at least there are predictable prices that never exceed the price at a place like B&H.

a day early.

I'm quite pleased... lens is in minty condition... really really really clean and I cant tell it from new to be honest.

a halfway decent camera shop that sells used gear. They'll probably offer some kind of decent ability to return it if you detect any problems in the first week or two.