Stay Away from These Companies!

[Dan Cook]

Taken from Scott's XSI thread, this is going to be a list of all the bad online camera companies.

Starting off:

Sonic Cameras:

http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Sonic_Cameras

Feel free to add to this posting.

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

As I said in another post just a few days ago, stay away from PhotoDynasty as well.
http://thoughts-of-dave.blogspot.com/2008/05/fake-reviews-of-photo-dynasty-on.html

I could be wrong, but I believe he is the same guy that runs Sonic Camera as well. The correct term is 'Bait and Switch'...

 

[Wes Carter]

I'd stay away from Broadway Photo broadwayphoto.com. They advertise cameras and lenses on sale for good prices, then try to upsell. If you don't bite, your 'clearance item' all of a sudden is on backorder. Who reorders clearance items? What is the purpose in having a 'clearance' sale?

 

[Greg Campbell]

Yikes!
Go to Reseller rating and sort all by # of reviews. On the second page, you'll find Best Buy, sporting a 1.25 (of 10) rating.

Dan, your list would be a vastly shorter, and lot easier to compile, if you reversed the criteria. Restrict it to the few stores that ARE trustworthy.
Newegg, B&H, Adorama, Mwave, ZipZoom, Mwave, etc.

There are soooo many shady camera / electronics dealers out there....

 

[cdcollura]

Good day all,

Stay clear - very clear - of this one: http://www.digitalliquidators.com

Digital Liquidators ... By far they have the LOWEST rating at resellerratings.com.

Also, and to no suprise (after my laptop experience (in another thread for Vista) over the Christmas / New Year's week) - Best Buy did not make much of a "grade" on Reseller-Ratings either!

Go to Reseller rating and sort all by # of reviews. On the second page, you'll find Best Buy, sporting a 1.25 (of 10) rating.

Above: You can see a PICTURE of their wonderful store-front!

The Reseller-Ratings site is FANTASTIC for this type of "check before you buy" research ... Digital Liquidators (also my show up under Broadway Photo and shown in earlier posts in this thread) had a "fractional" rating (like 0.5 or less) out of 10 ... Many of the posts are scary and depravic - "Very Dissatisfied" remarks.

Unfortunately, most was from customers who bought something, then got either a broken camera (or even an "empty shell" stripped of options, including battery, and everything in Japanese, etc) or nothing at all with 4x shipping charged, credit-card disputes, and such - all-in-all it was very bad - And, even worse, their money was lost forever.

I have an archived thread about my experiences years ago with these places (a good read)...

http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=5670

 

[Stephen Levine]

Another company to definitely stay away from: Ontime Digital Inc. out of NYC.
We went to purchase a cannon video cam through this site, since they were offering a tremendous deal that included an extra pack of tapes, a tripod and case, all for $450.
Unlike with other purchases, there was no confirmation e-mail, and a simple back order comment was given.
My wife inquired, and got no assistance with their customer service.
Next looking on the web, she found a tremendous long list of extremely angry individuals who had been taken by this outfit. Check it out on www.merchantcircle.com

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

What REALLY gets me about these scam artists, is when you Google for cameras they are in the mix, and even Google continues to give them good ratings.
UNBELIEVABLE!!!
But true.
That is how I got cought up with PhotoDynasty. I had to call the bank and cancel my CC - and get another one with a different acc no#.
That fixed em!

 

[Jim Saueressig]

Online Electronics Stores Caught in Consumer Fraud

The companies, all of which are based in Brooklyn, have agreed to pay a $765,000 settlement after a lengthy investigation by the attorney general’s office.

Best Price Camera, Foto Connection, 1 Way Photo, 86th Street Photo and Broadway Photo — have agreed to change their business practices and accept continual monitoring. Two other companies, Camera Wiz and Sonic Photo, will close.

Now if they will nail all of the rest. I would still avoid these guys on general grounds.

 

[Jason Foster]

Online Electronics Stores Caught in Consumer Fraud


Now if they will nail all of the rest. I would still avoid these guys on general grounds.

Yes...and stop advertising in legitimate magazines like Videomaker.

 

[jshields]

add Bingo Cameras to this list. i found a decent price on some cameras on their site, and in my other post on camera suggestions, asked if this was a good deal. patrick martin was nice enough to find out some reviews on the company, and OH MY GOD!!!! this is THE DEFINITION of rip off companies. they have a rating of .54/10. thanks for the info patrick!

http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Bingo_Cameras

 

[AlDanks]

WOT - Web of Trust

If you use Firefox, there is an extension called WOT - Web of Trust. It gives and indication of the user-rated trustworthiness of sites. It will warn you if you enter a site rated as untrustworthy.

URL = http://www.mywot.com/

Don't need to create an account to just use the ratings, only if you want to contribute site ratings.

 

[Jerry Prsha]

Or, just use OpenDNS.com for your DNS Settings. It's easier.

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

 

[Jim Saueressig]

Hi-PC - Seller on Ebay.

They sell a lot of electronic stuff.

I bought a Easycap USB 2.0 Video TV DVD VHS Audio Capture Adapter

The item arrived with a cdr with pirated software that was unreadable.
The hardware was a non functioning chinese fake.

They have a great feedback as a power seller and with that rating you cannot leave negative feedback for them until after a period of time.

Paypal wants me to return the fake at my expense to get my money back.

Avoid these scammers.

Take a look at the sorted negatives. List.

 

[D. McGee]

Hi-PC - Seller on Ebay.

They sell a lot of electronic stuff.

I bought a Easycap USB 2.0 Video TV DVD VHS Audio Capture Adapter

The item arrived with a cdr with pirated software that was unreadable.
The hardware was a non functioning chinese fake.

They have a great feedback as a power seller and with that rating you cannot leave negative feedback for them until after a period of time.

Paypal wants me to return the fake at my expense to get my money back.

Avoid these scammers.

Take a look at the sorted negatives. List.

I don't understand. How can a seller that obviously wronged so many people be at 99.6% positive feedback. Where is the break in the system?

 

[Jim Saueressig]

I don't understand. How can a seller that obviously wronged so many people be at 99.6% positive feedback. Where is the break in the system?

Power sellers make ebay big money. They are making me wait to give them a negative rating so that I can "resolve" the problem. My guess is that partly due to that they have many negatives that are forgotten and the other is the shear mass of people they sell junk to that works at times that gives positives. sell a million things a year and a few thousand people you scam won't make a difference in your rating.