Slashdot Mirror
Consumer Strikes Back at Crooked Online Retailer
BigBadLad writes "Seems like customers are at a huge disadvantage when dealing with dishonest retailers. This is the story of a man who had a horrible experience with an online camera retailer. In short he was lied to, yelled at, and threatened to be sued if he posted the experience on his blog. He was also persuaded to sign an agreement that would allow the retailer to charge him an extra $100 if he left bad feedback."
Except that he didn't sign the agreement to pay $100 if he posted unkind reviews. That was taken from another review which he cited.
Get it right, or pay the price.
The offending camera "dealer" site is: Priceritephoto.com
According to an update on his blog site, he has since reported this charlatan to the New York State Attourney General's Office. Also, apperently Price Rite Photo was listed on PriceGrabber, but has since been delisted.
My mom had the same experience. She placed a $800 camera order and was called that day to "confirm her address", at which point they proceeded to try and sell her a $150 warranty and other expensive accessories. Once she refused, they suddenly informed her the product was out of stock, but they later said they could get it to her by Friday if she paid for a $150 warranty.
What's unusual about that? You have to be the most ass backward consumer to fall for any of that and not just walk the other way immediately. And if you think the above is very unusual, you've probably never done any of the following before:
+ Shopped for a camera online in a non Amazon.com style place.
+ Shopped at Best-Buy
+ Shopped at Circuit-City
+ Shopped at Office Max
+ Shopped at Staples
Common sense would tell you to do the following:
+ Cancel the order.
+ Contact VISA (or Mastercard, etc) to prevent a charge or reverse any charges.
It's just part of doing business online. It's simple and credit card companies make it a fairly painless - one page long - process.
Having read (most of) TFA, it was another dissatisfied customer -- not the author of the main article -- who signed this agreement. But yeah, that's just stupid.
Others report similar experiences with PriceRitePhoto at resellerratings: http://www.resellerratings.com/seller8613.html
That's funny, epinions.com seems to disagree. Everything single review is very negative:
http://www99.shopping.com/xMR-~MRD-306792
If you have any questions, you might just give them a call, toll free at:
888-365-4300
New York and New Jersey camera stores are famous for this. The general scam runs something like this:
1) Advertise an incredibly low price that gets people's interest.
2) Take their credit card order, telling them the item's in stock.
3) Within a couple of days, phone the customer to ask them if they want to buy the accessories pack. This usually includes most of the things that were in the box to start with - like the charger, kit lens, etc. These cost several hundred more, making the camera more expensive than it would have been via a reputable dealer.
4) If they refuse, try berating them.
5) If they still refuse, announce that the model is out of stock - even though it was confirmed in stock when they ordered.
6) Wait for them to either give in and take the terrible deal or, if they do finally cancel on you, charge a 15% restocking fee for the camera you never took off the shelf. Either way, you sit on the money from their credit card for the whole period.
It's a pretty simple rule in the camera community: If the deal's too good to be true, it is.
You can use online reputation sites but they can be rigged. The store keeps sale details and then enters their own perfect feedback for any that don't get consumed.
Personally, I limit to the following:
B&H, Adorama: Both very reputable stores. Some people have minor issues but they do genuinely work hard. You can pretty much use them as baseline prices - if it costs more, you're paying too much, if it costs less, it's likely a scam.
Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. By using major retailers, whilst you won't get a great deal initially, you can often find a 10% sale for reward card members, 5% back in vouchers on the sale (which buys memory cards etc). and so on. Be careful of open boxes here. It's not unheard of for say a Canon 20D to be bought and then a Digital Rebel to be returned in the box.
Dell - Crazy as it may sound, they do have some great deals. The trick is to use sites like DealMeIn or HotDealsClub to find out when they have a great sale on.
NewEgg - even with an employee discount from working for one of the major manufacturers, NewEgg was within $20, had free shipping, and got it to me fast - which turned out far better than getting it with my discount.
When I first heard about this yesterday, I was surprised. The victim in this tale is a fan (or employee? dunno) of flickr, one of the hottest social network web apps around at the moment. Yet when buying a camera, he didn't take advantage of them at all.
Look around any photography forum, every time a questions like, "hey, I just saw this camera at an incredible price at this store, is this a good deal?" people always reply with "check out resellerratings.com. How someone so technically and netsocially (for lack of a better term) savvy didn't ask around about this new store they were about to send $3k to is a mystery to me. Heck, a simple google search would've revealed problems.
There are so many tools out there to verify good sellers/companies to do business with. Why do you think B&H has so much business, even though its prices aren't rock bottom? They win on service and reliability, again and again. Of course, they're not perfect, but they've never failed me, and 'horror stories' with them are few and far between - especially compared to the volume they do.
Speaking of trust systems: I've had excellent results with ebay - buying from reputable sellers. There are quite a few chinese/hong kong sellers on there with 10-50k transactions and 1-10 negative feedbacks. I don't know *any* brick and mortar stores with those kinds of numbers.
this link will load pics from pricerite infinitely!!! that will show 'em! http://electronicchaos.com/pricewrongphoto.html http://electronicchaos.com/pricewrongphoto.html
This is apparently very common behavior for camera and electronics shops in Brooklyn. It's so widespread that some guy actually went around and took pictures of the actual physical storefronts for all of these online shops.
Very classy establishments, all.
http://donwiss.com/pictures/BrooklynStores/
make sure to call priceritephoto and voice your displeasure, 888-365-4300. skype allows free calling to toll-free numbers. ;)
slashdotting a phone number anyone?
Blog via SMS text messaging
You missed an important line in your quote. Right before the paragraph the blurp you pasted, it says:
"and yet another review I found on the company:"
Personally, I look at the T&C of any retailer I make a large purchase from. That's how I spotted the $100 fee for the chargeback.
Essentially, gotchas like that are a clear sign not to do business with someone. If they're that worried about chargebacks or bad feedback that they try to penalize you for either in the T&C or EULA, run far away.
Start a happiness pandemic
These guys are good. I bought my first professional 35MM camera from them back in 1980, and they are still alive and kicking. They have five stores, two in West LA, one in Santa Barbara, one in Pasadena, and one in Santa Ana. Not a fly-by-night operation by any means. Everything from consumer to prosumer to pro; video, digital or film.
Can't lose with NewEgg either if all you want is a consumer-grade digital camera. Again, in California.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I dunno where you live, but I've shopped at all the listed retailers there and none act like that. For one, there's no stock games since it's an actual store. I get an item on the shelf and actually carry it to the front, there's no question on stock. Declining additonal warantee protection does nothing to affect the sale. I ALWAYS decline that, and they are still happy to take my money.
Disclaimer: As always, this is not legal advice. If you get legal advice on Slashdot, you need your head checked.
Depending on the state you are in, it's not always illegal. Many states permit recording so long as one party is aware of it. So you are free to record all phonecalls you make since you are aware of it. The reason call centres warn you is to ensure there aren't any legal problems anywhere.
Check your local laws but it's allowed in a large number of states.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
http://www.resellerratings.com/seller8613.html
Customer Satisfaction
Six-Month Rating: 4.39
Average Store: 7.23
Seems like they are selling the product only if you buy overpriced accessories with them. This is very usual thing to do if you start to read the stories of customers that have bought stuff from the lowest scoring stores.
?SYNTAX ERROR
Sorry, but amazon doesn't try to sell you overprice accessories, nor do they threaten to charge a "restocking fee" for items they will never ship if you cancel, plus they don't charge your credit card until they ship your item. That said, they do seem to have issues with properly estimating the the availability for anything that they don't have in stock, and I have repeatedly houded they customer service about this (the number is something like 800-750-7575 [slate.com prints it every year])
A quick google search for 'priceritephoto crook', suprisingly, revealed the following photo of the PriceRitePhoto building.
Looks a bit, uhm, sketchy.
I cannot stress this enough...
When buying products online, use a credit card, not a debit card. If the merchant acts in the way you described, dont argue with them. Wait a few days to see if you have been charged by them and if you have call you card issuing bank and explain the situation clearly to them and ask for them to peform a charge back on the transaction. You may need to sign and return some legal documents stating that you consider the charge to be illigitimate (this is designed to implicate folks who do this after receiving the goods without problem).
The credit card company will return the money to your card and the merchant will receive a letter from their bank informing them that the money has been removed from their account. If this happens many times on the same merchant account the merchant bank will close the account and the merchant will be unable to open another account. This will effectively put them out of business.
Issuing a charge back is a simple process (I have done it many times) and will hurt the retailer far more than shouting at them down the phone.
MBNA still offers one time use numbers. You log into their web site, and generate a number. The minimum expiration date is two months out, I think. After the transaction is processed you should deactivate the one time use number, because some people say that merchants can still charge the "one time use" number after the virtual expiration date.
A gift card is probably worse than a debit card, because there is no incentive for any company to protect you. The credit card company still wants your business, the bank might, but the gift card company has already been paid.
let me guess.... they got a lot of tech gizmo nerds that don't get to spend enough time with women?
Actually no. They (B&H) are staffed almost entirely by Hassidic Jews, some of whom appear to have have bracingly old-world opinions about the usefulness and divine purpose of the female gender.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
What credit card companies offer them and how do you go about making them?
I checked Discover's site (the card I have) and it looks like they offer one-time numbers as a free service. They have some stupid thing that integrates with IE, but there's also a version that lists "Netscape 6.2.something" as a requirement, so that one might work for all graphical browsers that support Flash 5.0 and up.
Would gift cards be the same thing?
Gift cards are definitely not the same thing and have a few drawbacks besides. You'll have to pay for the gift card with cash or money order, few online vendors even have gift cards (stores like Target and Sears probably don't honor gift cards online), and you can never get a cash refund on a gift card.