Slashdot Mirror
Cameras Online? How The Shysters Work
earlylate writes "How do certain photo and electronics dealers thrive despite widely-circulated warnings by unhappy customers? According to a new investigative website "many apparently separate and competing dealers are actually jointly owned and run" and "go to great lengths to conceal their locations and management." Further, some comparison-shopping sites "are in effect marketing partners with their affiliates," the very dealers they rate. There's a contest based on the suspicious "flood of similar, glowing reviews some dealers receive," as well as links to several sources of information and advice for the careful online shopper."
A lot of people don't realise the the big "price deal search engines" such as Kelkoo and Dealtime also return results based on the amount the retailers they link to have paid for a higher position. You'll often find you can dig up better deals just using Google. However, I know that at least one of the biggest UK online electronics retailers derives the highest percentage of paying click-throughs from Dealtime (that is, people referred by Dealtime, who then go on to actually buy a product). The Dealtime referrals actually result in more sales than people browsing their site to find stuff. So the idea/scam works well...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
I'd rather pay a little more and know that I'm buying from someone I can trust. So what if I can save a few bucks if I'm not sure I'm going to get exactly what I paid for? Sure I look for deals but it's a matter of balancing that against buying from someone reputable.
Bradley Holt
You mean to say that I shouldn't spend $100s based on the opinions of anonymous and untrusted (to me) sources.
I tell you, I'm shocked.
You'll be telling me next that the editorial in trade newspapers is somehow related to the advertising.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
When it comes to expensive, and frequently fragile electronics, always buy local. This should be a no brainer. The on-line prices are too good to be true simply because the on-line retailers know they won't have to deal with the customer service part.
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
Never buy your electronics from front stores in the New York City area.
I have heard nothing but bad news about these New York City stores using bait and switch tactics and selling refurbished goods as new. You are better off using Froogle.com or cnet.com and then doing a little reading of the reviews about the sites that came back with the least expensive results.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I tend to pick a reputable retailer I've already done trade with, and if the price is more than say 10% different I just assume it's a scam and ignore it unless I know someone else personally who's traded with them. Even if the difference is less than 10% I still prefer to buy from companies I or my friends have dealt with. I may miss some good bargains that way, but I've never been scammed...
Game dev and music blog
Use common sense. here's what I tell everyone that asks.
1) only buy from reputable sites. this has been going on since computer shopper days. its even more true today.
2) I only use my American Express (AMEX). I can't tell you how many times AMEX has helped with fraudulent charges, merchants that don't deliver etc. AMEX is expensive and a pain in the ass for mechants to sign up. If they are not willing to do that, than I won't buy. I will pay a slight premium for sights that take AMEX. It's worth it.
If I'd done both these when I first got online in the 90s I would have saved myself a lot of grief.
"It's technical in a psychometric kind a way" -- C. Parish
Most of those have been around for a long time. and the places with the glowing reviews always feel a bit suspicious when you dig deeper on them.
The fun part is that it highlights something that most people ignore. They will not think twice buying from someon on ebay with a 1000+ rating yet it is really simple to BUY rating points. (hint: search ebay for cupons) If you spend lots of money on something online and the price is too good to be true, be ready to lose your cash.
BTW: if it's less than $1000.00 you are pretty much hosed. I lost $500.00 to a scammer auto parts dealer on the east coast (read my blog for the name and location) and after getting my lawyer poised and finding out how much to bring the small claims suit against them It was much cheaper to simply drop it as it would have cost me $1500.00 to sue him... These scammers know this and that is why they rarely venture over that $1000.00 line.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Ok, so this site is trying to provide an impartial "scoreboard" system for determining if online retailers are trustworthy, but why should anyone trust these guys any more than any other merchant ranking site?
The site is up and down like a yoyo right now so I can't find out how they are gathering their information, I mean if it's all anecdotal how do they discern between legitimate issues, PO'ed customers or just plain ol' bad luck?
Personally, I only buy big ticket electronics and camera gear from local vendors because there is a bit less risk (i.e. no shipping) and I can put a human face on the store I'm buying from. I guess the other thing that makes me dubious about some online deals is when a vendor is claiming to sell something way below MSRP, that little "it's too good to be true" voice pipes up in my head.
crazy dynamite monkey
never before could you reach out to all of humanity
you guys realize there are some negatives to this idea? such as da wiseguys in crooklyn reaching out too?
"yeah, it just fell off da back of a truck, yeah da receipt is for a refiderator, so what's it to you mr. palookaville? you gonna come to brooklyn and make something of it, huh?"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Once you know, you newegg". And Amazon for anything non-electronic....
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Review sites for electronics and the like are chock full of super-cheesy, almost non-sensical reviews. If you look at reviews, and most of them consist of one or two lines of things that don't really matter, then it's a bogus review. There are so many of them, it becomes what I call "Surround and drown" fake reviews. Firefighters know that if you surround a fire with enough hoses, you can drown it sooner or later. These review sites have the same process, where all negative real reviews are drowned out by the fake ones.
"Timely shipping!" That one is my favorite fake review. Um, you ship via UPS or FedEx Ground. It's 3 days, no matter how you slice it. How can it not be timely?
"Great Customer Service!" Another of my favorites. The person hasn't done anything but buy something, in all likely hood. There hasn't been any customer service up to that point.
"Easy to use website ordering!" Um, yeah, that's the first thing I look for when buying electronics over the web.
If the review doesn't bring up any points, or doesn't provoke any honest thoughts, it is probably fake. Read the actual negative reviews.
Besides, why does this surprise anyone? The same thing can be said for almost every PC/XBox, PS/PS2 magazine or website. They all get such pats on the back from the companies they review, that they don't have an honest review in them. It's the equivelent of letting a lifelong, die-hard Rolling Stones fan review one of their concerts. The review is going to read "Dude, they Rawked!", even if Keith Richards was so stoned he forgot to play his guitar.
I think the biggest challenge is actually finding reputable reviews on-line. The problem with this large inbred group of scam vendors and review sites is that it floods google such that any search for:
"review " comes up with hundreds of bogus google bombs that have no valuable information in them. If you go to epinions.com, etc, unless an item has a fair number of reviews you can't trust that the reviewer isn't just astroturfing for the company's product.
For the areas I have some expertise like computer hardware or cameras, I know exactly where to look. But if I'm stepping slightly outside the bounds of my knowledge it becomes difficult. I was subscribed to Consumer Reports for a while but the flaw with them is that their information is always a year out of date it seems.
I'd definitely pay for a review site I could trust. Heck, I already do, having subscribed to Angie's List. Is there any equivalent for general consumer purchases?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Being pro-market, I see the scammers as the worst aspect of any market.
Being pro-market, you support a dreamworld that doesn't and will never exist. The problem is that you (and way too many people in way too important positions) don't realize that free market theory is based on a number of highly unrealistic assumptions and will thus never work the way it is advertised.
In an ideal free market, this problem would not even exist. One of the assumptions is that all participants have complete, truthful information. Obviously, that would be the end of any and all scammers.
What you're seeing is just one of the many corners where the whole free market thing is failing. And yes, maybe government's job is to make sure the whole thing doesn't fall apart because of the trouble near the edges.
Throwing a few people in jail certainly isn't a part of free market theory, but it does a fairly good job at replacing perfect information with honest, which while not perfect is a reasonably close substitute.
The problem is, of course, that our governments, pretty much no matter which one you choose, are not exactly breeding pools or good examples of honesty and integrity.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I have a feeling this sort of scam will disappear in due time.
You're new to this life, aren't you? The birth rate in the sucker demographics category is way too high for these scams to disappear anywhere within the forseable future.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
One of the assumptions is that all participants have complete, truthful information. Obviously, that would be the end of any and all scammers.
That is NEVER an assumption -- in fact I believe the counter-fact to be true. In a free market, every transaction is based on the assumption that both parties feel they are profiting from the transaction. This case is based on the risk versus reward idea. The bigger the reward is, the bigger one assumes the risk is. If Camera W123 sells locally for $499, at Amazon for $449, and John's Photo Shop sells it for $379, you're gaining a huge reward. If you jump on that price, you're accepting a risk. It is personal greed that leads people to buy from deep discounters, and they have to acknowledge that there is always a risk in making a purchase. The reason many people buy locally for more money is to lower their risk.
The problem is, of course, that our governments, pretty much no matter which one you choose, are not exactly breeding pools or good examples of honesty and integrity
This is true -- government tends to be run by scammers and shysters, in my experience.
What you're advocating is putting government in charge of markets -- the same government that is never transparent, hides information "legally" and has zero oversight except for a vote once every 4 years or so. I advocate dumping the government provisions and letting the new Internet information sharing structure take over. Now, we have instant voting based on consumer demand. If a lot of consumers get duped by a company, we'll soon have the ability to broadcast that information over many different sources.
I'd like to see an SMS server where you can message a number "JohnPhotoShop.com" and have it return "50 positives, 300 negatives, 15 neutrals" I believe this will happen, very soon, as Google and many other companies are trying to gain brand share by providing free SMS services. I use FBOWEB.COM to track all my flights and used the free PDA version of the site for a few months. Now I purchased a subscription as the site is really worth the information I've received -- and it is always more accurate than what the airlines provide.
I don't think government has protected us from scammers, ever. If anything, the platforms made by government are only used by scammers to find new loopholes (as is seen in the New York Photo scam that has been going on for 20 years). Now that information is available to EVERYONE, there is no excuse to getting scammed. Even some posts on slashdot today show that people didn't research the too-good-to-be-true pricing, and got scammed. Greed: you get what you deserve.
There is one at least that is a reputable dealer, B&H Photo. They are a massive store and sell still and video cameras from consumer up to extremely high end pro. They do audio gear, consumer and pro too. Of course because their are reputable their prices are good, but nothing special. However they are worth checking. I got my Yamaha reciever from them. Yamaha requires their recievers be purchased from a license dealer to honour warantee. All the local ones wanted full MSRP, however Yamaha lists B&H as a licensed dealer. Checked with them and it was much cheaper, even with $50 shipping.
So there ARE reputable dealers in New York, you just need to be careful. One thing to check is to see if they are authorized dealers. You can't fake something like that (Yamaha does the listing on their own site) and that's not something that a scammy, fly-by-night is going to do since the company wouldn't license them anyhow. If they are an authorized dealer for the companies that do that kind of thing, they are probably on the up and up.
I'd like to see an SMS server where you can message a number "JohnPhotoShop.com" and have it return "50 positives, 300 negatives, 15 neutrals"
And soon, there will be 50 competing services of that kind, half of which receive kickbacks from the companies they rate well. How do you choose which service to trust? Maybe a meta-service that rates the info-services? Soon, there will be 50 competing meta-services...
I don't think government has protected us from scammers, ever.
I actually think it has. Not 100%, not ever perfectly and completely. However when I travel on the train and I'm not afraid of robbers, then to be quite honest it's not because I think any of my fellow travellers would stand up and stop them - it's because government has been successful in keeping crime rates at such a level that being robbed is an unlikely event.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Mod me down if you must, but the inference that two 'foreigners' at different stores were in cahoots against the shopper - only evidenced by one's use of a walkie-talkie and a language the shopper didn't understand - smacks of racism. I could be wrong, but that's certainly what it seems like based on what was posted.
Paranoid, possibly, but not necessarily racist. The question is whether he would have jumped to the same conclusion that he was not dealing with two independent retailers if the clerk at the first store was the same race as himself, and the clerk at the second store was as well, but bore what might have been a family resemblance to the first clerk, and spoke quietly into the walkie-talkie so that he couldn't hear. I suspect that he would have reacted exactly the same way. Not everything has to be about race.
only because of the fact that there is a sucker born every minute.
This is a horrible quote.
It's a quote that was born from the realization that someone could take advantage of a trusting public on a mass scale. In other words, someone could easily make money through fraud using the trust of an inexperienced public as the lube, so to speak.
This means that the public likely hasn't encountered an asshole as big as the person saying, "There's a sucker born every minute." The notion of calling them "suckers" is a way of making it seem like they *deserve* to be defrauded. Have you had "friends" who thought it was smart/funny/cool to take advantage of your trust? Do you have a high opinion of a human who wants to make a *career* of that skill?
To me, the fact that the quote exists and isn't derided in the same way that we deride "Let them eat cake" is a sign of degeneracy in our culture. Yes, that's a value-judgement-charged statement, and I make no apology for it. We all have to stand somewhere, and I think fraud (and especially the notion that some people deserve to be defrauded) sucks to high hell.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.