A very good friend sent this to me today, it’s a shame a company would do this to anyone. What they told her after they tried to intimidate her was even worse. Any company that says this type of stuff about the military needs to understand what the military is. [Note: "Ed" and "Nancy's" names have been changed and none of the links...link because I don't want to improve on their search engine rankings.]
Here is my husband’s experience with this scam company.
The bottom line is that he bought the camera and some accessories as a gift for me for Mother’s Day and to use on R & R this summer on our vacation with the kids. It was originally $839 and he was sent the non-itemized receipt via email with a request that he contact them to confirm the delivery address. When he called back, they used a classic bait and switch technique.
Ed told them he no longer wanted the accessories, just the camera, and “Tom” their sales rep told him that the camera he bought did not come with a battery or charger (which normally comes in the manufactures box) so he had to purchase the accessories or it would not work — forcing him to not cancel the accessories order.
Ed then advised that he wanted to cancel the whole order, but was told it was their company policy to charge $250.00 for cancellations (no where to be found on their website by the way). He was losing his Vonage connection and was upset about the “fee” so he asked me to call them back.
When I contacted them, I asked for their mailing address. Chet told me “I am not authorized to give that out.” I knew right then something was wrong. I told Chet that I had a complaint and they gave me to “Chris”.
I advised Chris that I wanted to cancel the entire order, and wanted a full refund since the order had not been shipped. Chris then proceed to first tell me that he didn’t know how to do that. I advised “Chris” that he would be making the refund, or I would begin the process ofRecentemente anche il Texas Hold ‘Em e’ diventato il gioco di poker / casino piu popolare ovunque sia stato giocato. filing a complaint against their company.
Chris then went off on me. He yelled, swore, and tried to intimidate me. When that didn’t work, he said he didn’t want to deal with me, only my husband. I told Chris that my husband was a little busy right now in Iraq and that he asked me to call on his behalf.
Chris then stated the following “I am so SICK of people using the war as an excuse. Those guys signed up as volunteers, and now you want to use that as an excuse? I don’t want to do business with anyone in the military again”.
He said that he would give me the refund, but would not put it in writing, stating “Don’t you trust me?”. I knew he was a crook from the moment he opened his mouth, so of course I did not believe him.
I started doing some extensive research on this company. Basically, there is no information out there about Photo Dynasty (www.photodynasty.com) However, when you call them you get a recorded message calling themselves “Enterprise Photo”. So I started checking on them instead. Wow, did I find a lot of info and under multiple names/websites/phone numbers. It appears as though they are all related companies, and that when one starts to lose business from bad publicity , they just start a different website.
Go to www.newyork.bbb.org
Click on “Check out a business or charity”
Type in Enterprise Photo
Click on Best Price Cameras (another one of their company names)
See the listing you get and the complaints. Basically, it’s what I told you that they just change names when it gets to be too much of a problem. The only reason I knew Enterprise/Photo Dynasty were the same was from their recorded message.
They are also listed here:
http://donwiss.com/pictures/brooklynstores/
http://sheddingsomelight.com/buy-cameras/list/dealers-mraccfam.html (under Mr Accessory)
http://forums.photographyreview.com/showthread.php?t=10918&page=3
http://thoughts-of-dave.blogspot.com/2008/04/messin-with-broadway-photo-aka-best.html
So at this point this is what has happened:
They immediately charged the credit card (even though their policy says they won’t charge until item is shipped) for $1182 dollars. We never could figure out what all of the extra charges were for and they never really explained it.
1. My husband called them back and told them to go ahead and ship it - we know it will never arrive–however this way we can prove to Mastercard we never received any items
2. Also, the amount charged on our card does not add up to the amount we agreed to pay (they charged us $1182).
3. We have already started the dispute process with Mastercard
4. After reading so many complaints, my husband had M/C reissue him a new credit card number for fear of identity theft (which I found has happened to people in their blogs)
5. I have filed a complaint with the city of NY’s consumer affairs, who licenses these businesses
6. I am filing a complaint with the NY state Attorney General’s office
7 I am filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau of New York so they can know about the new name “Photo Dynasty”
8. I called yesterday, just to see if they would lie and tell me the item had been shipped however I was told it was not even a valid order number. They transferred me to someone else, but after a total of 50 minutes on hold (thankfully using Skype) while I was cleaning my office, I hung up.
Thankfully, we have some level of protection because we used a credit card. Had we used a debit card, the money would have went straight out of our bank account and would be gone forever.
A big part of this problem is that people may be inclined to use these scam companies because on several websites that review electronics online, they have this company/ these companies listed as an authorized seller. That because these con artists pay the website to be listed there (when you click on their link, they give the website a fee). Hence, people are going to be inclined to trust this company.
Again, I just don’t want someone else to get taken by these crooks.
Nancy
