so what if its grey market. Its the same lens. How many times did not need warranty service on a lens.

And if you check my past posts - I have stated the way to get service is buy this lens. Then buy the same lens from Adorama. Then return the lens from Adorama. Now you have a receipt for the lens from an American dealer.

No - you are not screwing Adorama. You are not screwing anybody. You are simply forcing Canon to provide a warranty - which they should do anyway - but they are ripping you off with their warranty policies !
YOu re not really screwing Canon - but they will think that ! hahaha

"... any USA warranty/non-gray-market lens purchased in the USA from any authorized dealer, would be covered by the USA warranty."

Canon will repair gray market (which some authorized dealers also sell... B&H calls them "imported" now, but it's the same thing). However, there's technically no warranty on gray market items. So they are supposed to charge you for any repair work. I have heard of Canon waiving repair cost on gray market items fairly often... essentially honoring the international warranty even though they're under no obligation to do so.

Gray market items are physically identical to USA warranty items... no better, no worse. The only difference is the way they were imported... Using "unofficial" channels and taking advantage of currency exchange rates, gray market importers can knock a few dollars off the price of an item.

"White box" items are not necessarily gray market. For example, a white-box lens is one that was originally bundled with a camera by the manufacturer. The retailer has split up the bundle and sold off the camera separately and is taking advantage of the discounted pricing manufacturers typically offer with bundles.

For example, Walmart is offering the Canon EF-S 18-135mm IS STM lens for $549. This is the standard price for that version of the lens, packaged and sold individually. The same lens can be bought in "white box" at B&H Photo for $399. How they can offer this is obvious if you compare how a T7i is priced when factory bundled with the lens ($1049) versus body-only ($749)... Buying the bundle you essentially pay $300 for the lens. B&H can split them up and sell separately, making an additional $99 profit on the lens, but still significantly discounting it from it's usual selling price.

Buying from Abe's of Maine... BE VERY CAREFUL. There are three different EF-S 18-135mm lenses...

1. original and cheapest version with micro motor focus drive... slower focusing and noisier... not great for video and not really up to some tasks such as sports/action photography.
2. a better one with STM (stepper motor) focus drive that's faster, smoother and quieter.... preferable for video work, but still a little slow for sports/action shooting.
3. the newest one with even faster "Nano USM" focus drive (2X to 4X faster than the STM version, according to Canon), yet still quiet and smooth for video work (non-Nano USM is fast, but isn't great for video).

Wherever you saw that low priced 18-135mm, it's probably being the cheapest version, maybe white box or gray market too.... and might be a "bait and switch". If you place an order to buy it, they'll email or call you and tell you it's out of stock or that it's a "Chinese version" that won't work correctly on your American camera, and offer you one of the others at a better price.... And if you accept that offer, pay the higher price, you may or may not get what you ordered... it might actually end up being the cheapest one, even though you paid more.

If you Google "Abe's of Maine" reviews, they aren't very encouraging. According to the Better Business Bureau, their parent company Westpark Electronics, LLC has 133 complaints filed against it and 12 out of 12 consumer reviews are negative. Yelp gives them two stars out of five (259 individual reviews). Consumeraffairs.com gives them one star out of five (30 votes). NBC News cited them as an example of bait and switch, shady electronics sales outfits, in a news story about purchasing an HDTV. http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/abes-of-maine/internet/abes-of-maine-bait-and-switch-1143123 describes their "sales technique" pretty thoroughly. Abe's is actually in NJ, by the way. I think at one time they were a legit store in Maine. One outlier, resellerratings.com has a pretty good overall rating. But I rarely refer to that site any more... I'm pretty sure the shysters have figured out how to manipulate the results there, to boost their scores.