Tell him to stop being a tool and just get a small screwdriver or something in there to lever them back up. If your gentle then they bend very easily without snapping. I have done that loads of times.
It is 100% due to poor cf card insertion. He has done that himself.
My advice:
If you ever sell anything on Ebay take photos of the serial numbers/stickers and add them to your Ebay listing as proof.
thats not proof im affraid
There needs to be a real alternative to ebay.
I replaced the CF reader/pins on a 20D many moons ago (I think I bought it from Zogger on here actually). Only cost me about £25-30 in parts. Not much help but bent pins aren't the end of the world.
Three possibilities:
1) You sent it with bent pins
2) He bent the pins
3) It's a totally different camera
You'll need to prove which one it is.
Just saw this thread and was going to mention this
Fwiw, I broke the CF slot by stupidly putting a card in backwards (surprisingly with the design of CF it just fits in there) and I believe it only bent one of the pins but that made it completely unusable.
I tried to un-bend it but couldn't get it working, so decided to make it someone else's problem and buy a new camera which I wanted anyway![]()