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.

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).

they deserved it

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.

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.

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.

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.