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A little research in the photography forums and the dealer review sites reveals certain practices so common that many sellers seem to be following the same Online Dealer Instruction Manual. We're waiting for the paperback version, but we've got a pretty good idea of its contents.

    •  The New Identity

When enough unhappy customers give you a troublesome reputation, what can you do to attract new buyers? How about a clean start with a fresh new identity? This has been the established pattern for years for some of the "families" in our dealer pages.

Late 2005 and early 2006 have seen some notable examples. The most prominent was the PriceRite family's creation of Barclays Photo in December after a widely-publicized incident provided the coup de grace for PriceRite Photo's public image.

Among the newest examples (as of this writing) are Blue Stripe Photo and Trusted Photo, introduced in April and September respectively by the Express family. Their owners have worked hard to craft a trustworthy image:

   -- By putting only a partial address on Blue Stripe's website and none on Trusted Photo's, they obscured their association with the better-known members of the family, Express Cameras and Genius Cameras.

   -- They have generated a flood of good reviews on several shopping sites. Blue Stripe had 21 "very satisfied" reviews posted on ResellerRatings between June 14 and July 14. On BizRate(ShopZilla) there are 45 ratings from May and June, with a claimed total of over 500. By July 26 that number had grown to "1000+" -- not bad for a site that made its very first sale in May. But Trusted Photo did even better: their first few reviews on RatingsPlanet are from before their website went online!

    •  The Proven Sales Tactic

Probably the most pervasive topic of customer complaint is the "confirmation" phone call -- usually a hard-sell effort to add unwanted, often overpriced extras to the original order. Although experienced buyers perceive this technique as evidence of a dishonest dealer, it is apparently so successful that many dealers require it as part of every purchase.

These dealers claim that the true purpose of the call is to protect customers against fraudulent use of their credit cards, and that the sales pitches only serve to offer information and opportunities the buyer may be unaware of. We recently ran across rare proof from a startup web dealer that, on the contrary, the call is an important, preplanned sales tactic.

In June 2006, Digital Shopcart, an active eBay dealer since 2003, registered a domain and debuted an independent website. Advertising for new staff, they ran the following employment ad on Craigslist in New York [the bold face is ours]:

Web \Sales Office worker -- Tue Jun 27 -- (Brighton\Manhattan Beach)
email: guez555@hotmail.com

Looking for person that is VERY litterate in internet, in order to post new items in our web sites and research prices before hand on all search engines. Requirements include calling customers that bought on our sites and offering them accessories and warranties. Must be VERY well spoken voice, and convincing....

Links to this ad and the website's domain registration were posted on a photography newsgroup on July 9; by July 14 the ad had been removed from Craigslist and the domain registration had been changed to anonymous.

    •  The Spurious Location

Sometimes it helps with potential customers to appear to be located away from the other guys -- say, in a different state. There are several examples on our dealer pages. A good one (again) is from the PriceRite family: The Camera Mall uses a New Jersey address, separating it from its siblings and all the others in Brooklyn. Most shoppers wouldn't suspect that that address is a rented mailbox at a UPS Store barely two miles outside Brooklyn.

For another dealer the motive is different, as suggested by its name: My Tax Free. Their website proclaims, "From Delaware, The Tax-Free State." It might more appropriately say "From A Mailbox at The UPS Store, 4 Miles From the Pennsylvania Line and 25 Miles From Our Suburban Philadelphia Owners."

For My Tax Free, see our usual dealer rundown below.

    •  The Conspicuous Non-Location

In this popular alternative to The Spurious Location strategy, the dealer carefully allows no address at all to appear on its website, in its ads, on search-sites, or anywhere a curious customer might discover it. (We're always surprised that shoppers buy from such a dealer, but photography forums are filled with comments by those who have.) One good example is Howard Pierce's Direct AV, the newest member of the PricesRite family.

The most recent and impressive example is YellowBee Photo. Claiming stores in Brooklyn, Paris, and London but offering no addresses, YellowBee Photo sets a new record of three non-locations for a single dealer. Their actual Brooklyn address, it turns out, is the same as Digital Shopcart's and looks quite a bit different from from the picture they use on their site's "About Us" page. (As you can judge from Don Wiss' actual photo.)

Update: YellowBee Photo and its sister company, Digital Shopcart, went offline in mid-March, 2007, replaced at first with the message "This site has been shutdown by the hosting company." YellowBee then emailed its customers, "To make your shopping at Yellow Bee Photo a much greater experience our website will be off until further notice..."

For YellowBee Photo, see our usual dealer rundown below.