TS-E 50mm f/2.8 macro serial number

[k.j.ar]

Hello CR, long time reader/lurker first time poster.

I have an issue regarding registering canon lenses and was wondering if anyone else ran into the same issue. I have about 5 canon lenses and have registered all of them with canon. In each case the serial number I used was printed on the lens, printed on the paper work in the box, and reported in EXIF data. All of these 5 lenses were registered with canon. However, I recently bought a new TS-E 50mm lens directly from B&H photo and the serial number (on lens, paper, and exif) will not allow registration. I got on the phone with canon and confirmed it's not a canon SN. I got on the phone with B&H who provided me with a much longer SN which does contain the SN printed on the lens, papers, and EXIF. Using the much longer number in its entirety also does not work for registration.

Any ideas what is going on here? Of course, I'm suspicious of a fake but everything looks legit. It has been years since I bought my last lens from canon so things may have changed. Has anyone else ran into this?

thanks

 

[koenkooi]

I've run into similar issues with newly released lenses and CPS Europe, for some lenses I had to add '21' to the front of the serial, for others I had to wait a week or 2 for the serials to get added to the system. It amazes me that Canon will announce a lens 6 months before it ships and doesn't update their systems till a few weeks after people have received their lenses.

And contacting Canon about it doesn't help, the CPS website says "Call regular Canon", the people at Canon say "That's a CPS issue", the CPS people don't check their email.

 

[neuroanatomist]

It’s not a new problem. When I registered my new EF 70-200/2.8 II many years ago, the Canon USA site wouldn’t accept my purchase date, stating it was before the lens was released. It wouldn’t even accept the date I tried registering, even though the lens was in my hands and thus clearly already released.

 

[k.j.ar]

Interesting, I wouldn't have guessed that canon's would be slow to update their systems with SNs. However, that explaination makes sense since this lens has been back ordered for a while and I must have gotten a fairly fresh copy.

Thanks for your input! I was somewhat confident everything was ok but for the price of this lens i wanted to be sure.