Comments on Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: PriceRitePhoto: Shut Down

By the way, the owners name is not Ed Lopez. His n...

2005-12-11T18:04:00.000-08:00

By the way, the owners name is not Ed Lopez. His name is Chaim Pikarski. I know it because I worked for him in the past. His tactics do not surprise me, and all he is trying to do is hide his true identity through the alias of Ed Lopez. Actually, I would be very surprised if you ever spoke to the owner. It was most likely just an employee that provided you a fictitious name and is probably just a manager.

Ed Lopez is apparently the owner of priceritephoto...

2005-12-03T00:18:00.000-08:00

Ed Lopez is apparently the owner of priceritephoto. The whois info on the site shows that the contact person is "Eduardo Lopez".

That is assuming (1) this guy is actually the owne...

2005-12-02T07:41:00.000-08:00

That is assuming (1) this guy is actually the owner (2) the site was actually taken off-line by DOS attacks.

Given your (and countless others') experiences with them, I find it at least plausible that they took down the site on their own, so they could blame it on "hackers" (such a convenient scape goat) and are already up and running, with the same deceitful tactics under a different domain name.

Maybe I'm just too cynical, but let's not be *so* hasty to blame our own community when this "company" doesn't exactly have the best track record for truthfulness.

I'm not sure the legal channels are going to help....

2005-12-02T07:01:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure the legal channels are going to help.

This is not a new problem. If you search through consumer reviews at places like http://www.resellerratings.com , you'll find that many of the Brooklyn based scammeras have been around for years.

Also, there are many comments from consumers indicating that complaints were filed with the Attorney General's Office for similar tactics used by some of the other Brooklyn based dealers.

Yet, nothing appears to have been done about it (this has been going on for a LONG time).

In other words, I think that the elected officials are most likely corrupt (which is probably why dealers can get away with these types of tactics in Brooklyn).

Bryan Biggers has a pretty good article here that consumers should read:

[url=http://webpages.charter.net/bbiggers/DCExperiments/html/body_buying.html]How to Buy a Digital Camera without being Robbed[/url]

I am a moderator on a Digital Camera forum, and I see this type of thing reported often (almost always from various vendors based in Brooklyn).

what goes around comes aroundthey deserved it

2005-12-02T05:38:00.000-08:00

what goes around comes around

they deserved it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_rite_photoPrice...

2005-12-02T01:24:00.000-08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_rite_photo

Priceritephoto wikipedia page - a diggmobb combats fraud
The Priceritephoto story is a historical moment in digg's history and the internet's history. Contribute to the wiki article.

Dude,When will it get to your head?? You have been...

2005-12-01T19:26:00.000-08:00

Dude,
When will it get to your head?? You have been screwed and you still support these people?? What is wrong with you?

There is no Ed Lopez and nobody has been fired. Get it? The site was probably taken down by this guy who calls himself Lopez. He then calls you again knowing you would write about it on your blog.

Tell him to stop calling you.

These people are used to stuff like this - they will open a store under a different name and screw someone else that comes along.

Ignore them...Peace out.

I don't think they were hacked, I think they were ...

2005-12-01T18:16:00.000-08:00

I don't think they were hacked, I think they were shut down. You now get a cPanel "Nothing configured here" page, which looks like their ISP yanked them.

Given the list of sites that Netcraft says use the same hosting provider, I'd say they got yanked for bandwidth use, not any higher moral standard. :)

While I agree with your point that hacking and DoS...

2005-12-01T17:19:00.000-08:00

While I agree with your point that hacking and DoS attacks are not the most legal thing to do, and that, in a perfect world, actions such as filing complaints, writing lawmakers, etc. would ultimately shut operations like this down, in reality, this does not work. These guys (and many others) have been in business for many years, and even in cases where they do get shut down (which is rare), they just change their names, locations, and websites and start again.

The BBB and everyday consumers don't have the resources to sue these guys, law enforcement has more important things to do, so usually they have nothing to fear. Actually, the reason they do persist is the fear that they invoke in the people that do complain, through thinly veiled extortion (i.e., threatening to charge your credit card for not doing things their way).

There is an inherent inbalance in these situations, putting the burden on everyday people who most of the time don't have the time nor money to pursue lawsuits. I've followed this story for the last few days, and I've read many comments on eBay and other review sites that are unbelievable regarding pricerite. I am amazed that companies like this are allowed to operate - that they haven't been shut down.

I truly believe that priceritephoto has gotten justice, and no matter how much anyone says that this is not the "high" road, I disagree, because the people doing the DoS and continuous calling, etc., are, to me, not doing it for "evil" reasons, but are doing it because it is truly the right thing to do, from what they've done to countless others (and this is well documented). Once you start profiting from the users of the internet, the only real "citizens" in this world are the people that visit your site - the collective whole of the internet - and therefore justice should be served by them.

To me, in a perfect world, there would be a task force that reviews cases such as yours, decides if a company has done wrong repeatedly through publicly available information, and doles out justice (whatever that entails - not necessarily what happened here, but if nothing gets done, then, perhaps).

To me, this would be the high road.

Christ, Hawk... get off the high horse. The fact ...

2005-12-01T16:54:00.000-08:00

Christ, Hawk... get off the high horse. The fact that your poor choices in vendors was made into the topic du jour of the blogosphere for half an instant makes little difference to anything in the long run. Thousands of people will have similar events happen to them, without the benefit of your event's exposure. Try to find room in your noggin to parse that bit of info amidst all the schadenfreude that is certainly swimming around in there.

So did he ever get the camera? From them or somewh...

2005-12-01T16:08:00.000-08:00

So did he ever get the camera? From them or somewhere else? And what about the money?

I'll bet he's mistaking the flood of slashdot and ...

2005-12-01T16:03:00.000-08:00

I'll bet he's mistaking the flood of slashdot and digg visitors as a denial of service attack.....guess it kind of is, but its not illegal or even unethical by any means.

I agree we should pursue it legally.But the fact i...

2005-12-01T15:56:00.000-08:00

I agree we should pursue it legally.

But the fact is in today's society we want things instantly, easily, and we want to KNOW they got done.

This makes the events we've seen over the last day inevitable.

I'm sure we all hope the AG and BBB get this guy by the balls, but we're too jaded to wait weeks or months (if ever) for the bureaucratic process.

Dude... read the comments from the new story on Di...

2005-12-01T15:51:00.000-08:00

Dude... read the comments from the new story on Digg. They've found so much stuff about this whole thing.

I'm not sure if the guy is the owner or not. It c...

2005-12-01T15:33:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if the guy is the owner or not. It could be that Ed Lopez doesn't exist, it could be that Steve Philips doesn't exist, it could be that John Hancock doesn't exist. It wouldn't surprise me. While I don't have much sympathy for these guys I do think it is important that we restrict our response to legal tactics.

Certainly with all the dirt that has been dug up on them in the past few days it shows that my experience is more than a single isolated mis-deed. I just think we need to be careful to respond responsibly.

If you read up and follow the trail of dirt on the...

2005-12-01T15:28:00.000-08:00

If you read up and follow the trail of dirt on these guys, they had it coming.

No one should weep a single tear for their downtime or "inconvenience". Think of all the customers they have inconvenienced, ripped off, abused or worse.

Oh yeah, they had this coming.

Justice, and power to the people.

So you actually believe this guy is the owner? I ...

2005-12-01T15:27:00.000-08:00

So you actually believe this guy is the owner? I definitely don't...