Hey Arun, do you remember when I was shopping for a new TV a year or two ago, and I found one online for like $500 less than everywhere else? I ordered it. The next day I got a phone call from someone that worked at the place I ordered it from. First he said he wanted to verify my credit card information… I of course thought this was stupid, since I had entered it on the web page and I usually assume people are able to read.
Then I think he asked if I wanted to buy an extended warranty or something. This didn’t seem too far out of the ordinary. I said no. Then I think he said that if I wanted a manual and the factory box and stuff that there would be an extra fee. It sounded a lot more suspicious when he said.
Arun was around while I was on the phone, so I told the guy at the company to hold on, I told Arun what the guy was saying and Arun was like, “That sounds really sketchy. If I were you I’d cancel your order.” “But this is so much cheaper than everywhere else…” “Yeah, probably because it’s stolen or broken.” So I told the guy I wanted to cancel it and he was like, “Ok, your order has been canceled, bye.” And THAT sounded really suspicious. What kind of a company is so willing to cancel an order? It was like he was expecting me to do it. He wasn’t surprised at all.
After that I googled around and hundreds of people had complained about similar experiences.
PRESENT DAY
There has been an extremely popular story linked to from digg about someone being deceived in a similar way by PriceRitePhoto. I’m not sure if PriceRitePhoto was the company I was dealing with… but I’m pretty sure they were run by the same people. At the time I did a whois on the domain and found who registered it, then looked at other domains by the same people. They had a few online stores with the same crappy interface.
The lesson is: Read reviews about a place before you place an order!
When they called to verify your credit card information, did they read out your credit card information or did you have to tell them your credit card information again? Because that’s also weird.
I don’t remember… they probably read it out loud.
I had a similar experience with buying a camcorder from a place in New York. When the guy asked me on the phone “Do you want the NTSC? That’s extra…” I knew things had take a turn for the worse.
yeah, i remember that… that’s the problem with the internet, ya know? suddenly you have all these products, services, and information at your fingertips… but it also means the black market can deliver straight to your door…