PriceRitePhoto Make money online with Web advertising recommendation and tips about easy methods to generate income online with marks earn a living from home secrets and techniques, social media, search engine marketing, working from home and make a full time income working from home also recommendation on software program packages and ways of getting free visitors to your web sites, that can prevent time and make your life easier to liberate more of your time with different earning money on-line projects. Keeping you updated with a number of the finest money making opportunities obtainable on the Internet.
"I will make sure you will never be able to place an order on the internet again." "I’m an attorney, I will sue you." "I will call the CEO of your company and play him the tape of this phone call." "I’m going to call your local police and have two officers come over and arrest you." "You’d better get this through your thick skull." "You have no idea who you are dealing with." These are all direct threats that I received today from an individual who identified himself as Steve Phillips, the manager of PriceRitePhoto in Brooklyn, New York when I called to inquire about my order with them. My crime? Telling him that I planned to write an article about my unfortunate experience with his company regarding the camera order I had placed with him yesterday. How are these people able to stay in business? I suppose I should have been duly warned based on PC World’s Camera Confidential expose written a few years back about unscrupulous camera operators operating out of New York, but I have never been so utterly offended by a retailer in my life. I guess in some ways this is my own fault, or as Steve Phillips reminded me, you’re a "professional photographer you should know
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better than to buy things on the internet this way." I have been keeping track of The new Canon EOS 5D for a while. As those of you who visit this site regularly know, photography is a passionate hobby of mine. I’ve told myself that I’d pick up a 5D as soon as the price dropped below $3,000. I’ve been regularly checking both Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber for a while waiting for one to drop. Well yesterday for the first time I saw that the 5D was for sale for $2,899 at PriceRitePhoto. I placed an order online and this is where my trouble began. The order went through and was confirmed and is shown below.
The first thing that happened was I received a call from an individual who identified himself as Joseph telling me that there was a "problem" with my order. He said he needed to "verify" the security code on my American Express. Although I had given that security code in the order I gave him this code again. He then tried to explain to me that I was going to need some accessories with this camera. For starters I was going to need a new memory card. When I told him that I already had a memory card he became somewhat insistent that mine was not good enough. After I wouldn’t buy his memory card he said I’d need new batteries for the camera. Again I told him that I already had two batteries at home and would not be needing to purchase these from him. He then thanked me for my time confirmed my order verbally, said that it would be shipping out in the next few days and hung up. So today I checked on my order online again and saw that it had not been routed to shipping and called the company back again. Four times I was put on hold for a substantial amount of time and had to hang up and call the company again. Finally I was able to connect with an individual who said his name was Steve Phillips. Steve Phillips abruptly told me that the camera was out of stock. When I protested and told him that it was confirmed online yesterday and verbally by his sales rep he refused to budge. When I told him that even right now as we speak the camera was still showing online at that price on his website,(see below with today’s date) he still insisted that he did not have the camera.
At this point I thanked him and informed him that I would be writing an article about my experience with his company. It was at this point that he went ballistic. He first told me that if I did this that he would not cancel my order but just never fill it. If I cancelled it he said he’d charge me a 15% restocking fee. When I told him that that would be unethical he went nuts. He accused me of trying to "extort" him and said that he was going to have two local police officers come over and arrest me. He then went on to say that as a "professional photographer" I should have known better than to try and buy a camera this way and that he was an attorney and would sue me if I wrote an article about my experience. He told me that I had no idea who I was dealing with and that as he had my work contact info that he was going to call both my immediate supervisor and the CEO of my company and tell them that I was trying to extort him. "I will take this very personally," he said. He claimed to have recorded our phone call and said that he would make sure that I would "never be able to order anything on the internet again."
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Of course these threats only served to agitate me more. After about 20 minutes of this abuse I told him that I had to go and he refused to get off the line. He said that if I hung up that he would just charge me for the whole camera and never ship it. I hung up and he called me back. I left for my meeting and he called back asking to speak with my boss. This is by far the most abusive situation I have ever encountered with any retailer on the internet. One of the things that troubles me the most about this situation is that I found this retailer through Yahoo! shopping and they were perceived to have positive feedback. Is the feedback mechanism for Yahoo! Shopping broken? How could this horrible retailer have a four star rating with 858 ratings. I’m convinced that there is a possibility that many of the "reviews" for this company could be fake. I should though have sorted through the reviews to the worst to see that many others had fallen prey to similar fraud by this company. How is this company still allowed to offer their products through Yahoo! Shopping? PriceRitePhoto may also be doing business as C&A Marketing and TheCameraMall.com Below are some examples from other users: "very bad place for shoppping. Ordered a TV a week ago. when checking out, the shipping price was higher than displayed by Yahoo. That is ok. Called customer service 2 days later to make sure the order was ok. The guy from customer service tried to sell other things to me, and promised the item will come in 2 days. After 3 days, called again, I was told they over sold the item, and my order was cancelled. what a joke! Don’t buy thing from this merchant!!!" "In all the years I’ve done business with online stores(and I’ve done plenty), this is by far the ABSOLUTE WORST company I’ve conducted business with yet. They’re customer service is almost completely inaccessible despite their 24/7 365 claim, they don’t deliver on anything they say they will, they’re rude and pushy, and any information that IS sent back is usually filled with vague half-answers that do nothing to solve any problems. This is just an awful business experience. Case in point: They claim to be open on Sundays over the phone from 10AM to 4PM EDT. Well, what they really mean is that the sales department is open, but customer service(who will place you on hold forever during the week) is closed, as is billing. STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY. And warn your friends. …" "I gave this store an overall rating of 1. That is because Yahoo does not allow me to rate it any lower. I cannot stress enough how poor the customer service from the wretched excuse of a store. First off, they stress ‘we ship in less than 24 hours’. That is a blatant lie. An hour after placing the order, I received a call to confirm that I had indeed purchased a camera, and that the delivery address was correct. So far, so good. I returned the call, and informed them that yes I had indeed purchased a camera, and yes, the information was correct. The next day, I received another phone call to confirm the shipping address, and did I also want to purchase an extended warranty? Yes, the address is correct, and no, I don’t want your warranty. They assured me my camera would be shipped that day. Three days later, I again received a phone
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call to confirm the shipping address, which had now been done 3 times, and did I want to purchase the extended warranty? Yes, the information is correct, no I don’t want your stupid warranty, I was assured the camera would be shipped that day. It is, in my opinion unconscionable to delay shipping an order for over a week, just so a company can try a high pressure sales job, on a warranty a customer has already told them, repeatedly, that they don’t want. It has now been ten days since the date of purchase, and still no camera. My experience with this store is one I will never repeat, nor would I wish it upon my worst enemy!!" and yet another review I found on the company: "I placed an order with TheCameraMall.com (aka PriceRitePhoto aka C&A Marketing) on June 9, 2005 for a Sony DSR-PD170 camcorder. At the time the price advertised on-line was very low, which should have raised a warning flag, but a call to the company confirmed the item was in stock ready to be shipped, that it was a US model, the user’s manual was in English, and the salesman (Joseph) seemed helpful. There was some pressure to add unwanted items like a tripod, extra battery, etc, but they were declined. An offer to add insurance was offered, and initially I declined but then agreed after being told that otherwise if the product arrived and was non-functional I would be taking full risk. Before the product could be shipped I was asked to sign and fax a form, appended below, that indicated that if I wrote any negative feedback I would agree to have my credit card charged $100, and that I also agreed to waive my right to chargeback to the credit card company, and that product could not be returned for any reason. I signed and returned this form with the understanding that the company would send the item I ordered. However after a week there was no indication of a product even having been shipped, and the customer service contact indicated that only the salesperson could give me order status, so after several tried I reached Joseph again, and now he indicated that he couldn’t ship the product unless I faxed him a copy of my credit-card!!! This I refused to do, and have never, ever had to do for a transaction. I sent email to the company requesting cancelation of the order, and received yet another email asked me to sign and fax back a form indicating that I would not post negative feedback and if I did I was authorizing my credit card to be charged $100. I refused to sign this. I did post feedback to the feedback links provided by the customer describing the details of the transaction, including the forms I had been sent. The day after posting the feedback describing my attempt to buy the video camera from PriceRitePhoto/CameraMall, I received a call from a "John Hancock", claiming to be the owner of the camera companies, and demanding that I remove the feedback I posted. He said that he would charge my credit card for the amount of the camera and and additional $250 for each
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posting. He also said that he was shipping a Malaysian version of the camera, without a lens, to me, and that he would make money on the deal, and I couldn’t stop the shipment, or dispute the charge. My credit card company confirmed that a pending charge had been placed by PriceRite, but the charge was not yet posted, and once it was posted, I could dispute. The next day, July 6, I received several calls from "John Hancock", demanding again that I remove the feedback I had posted, and when I agreed that I would remove anything that he felt was not accurate, but if he could not indicate any inaccuracy, then the feedback would remain. He screamed and swore at me over the phone, and said that he would post my credit card number on the internet if I didn’t comply. On July 8 a charge was posted to my credit card for $2139.99 and a second charge was posted for $100.00. I called my credit card company and initiated the dispute process. The security department of BankOne Credit strongly suggested that I cancel my credit card, and complete an internet fraud report. Description of how you were defrauded: My credit card has been charged $2238.99 for an cancelled order. I’ve been threatened with additional multiple charges against my credit card unless I change feedback posted to the Internet, and I’ve been threatened with having my credit card number posted to the Internet. I’ve had to cancel my credit card on the advice of my credit card provider." Make money on-line with Web advertising and marketing recommendation and tips about tips on how to generate profits on-line with marks work from home secrets and techniques, social media, search engine marketing, working from home and make a full time earnings working from home also advice on software packages and methods of getting free site visitors to your web sites, that can prevent time and make your life simpler to free up extra of your time with other earning money online projects. Retaining you up to date with a number of the finest money making opportunities obtainable on the Internet.
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