When Thomas called to complain and threatened to blog about the incident, the manager of the store, Steve Phillips, was threatening and abusive. He claimed that he would have Thomas visited by the police, that he'd harass Thomas's boss, that he'd charge Thomas's credit card for the full amount and then not ship the camera, and so on. He did, in fact, call Thomas's boss and scream at him, too.

Subsequently, thousands of Digg users saw a story and clogged the PriceRitePhoto site and phones with calls and complaints about this behavior. Thomas found a review of the company describing a separate incident in which PriceRitePhoto required a customer to sign an "agreement" through which he promised to pay a $100 fine if he left negative feedback on his transaction with these fraudsters, and to unconditionally waive his right to a charge-back if the order wasn't filled (it wasn't).

Thomas reports that PriceRitePhoto also goes by the aliases C&A Marketing and TheCameraMall.com.

"I will make sure you will never be able to place an order on the internet again." "I'm an attorney, I will sue you." "I will call the CEO of your company and play him the tape of this phone call." "I'm going to call your local police and have two officers come over and arrest you." "You'd better get this through your thick skull." "You have no idea who you are dealing with."

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:48:07 PM permalink | Other blogs commenting on this post