The Value of Outlaw Photography
Last month, photographer Thomas Hawk thought he got a great deal on a camera through an online store. Turned out, the Brooklyn-based company was running a bait-and-switch scam. According to commenters, Hawk’s experience with Brooklyn-based bait and switch scams was not unique.
One enterprising soul decided to check out some of the online camera shops with addresses in the neighborhood. Over the course of his tour, which must have taken weeks, he found that many of these online retailers have less-than-savory brick and mortar locations:
Don Wiss took more than a hundred pictures of different retail outlets. While he was still on his journey, word began to spread.
A fellow getting out of his car saw me taking my camera out. After hearing my first name he knew exactly who I was! He didn’t want me to take the outside. It was just a plain ordinary warehouse.
Wiss got shots of the inside and the outside anyway.
If you’re ever considering buying a camera online, you might want to pop over to Wiss’s gallery and see if he’s got a listing for your store, so you have a better idea who you’re buying from. If it’s just a mail drop you might want to investigate further before risking a lot of cash.
Links to the Hawk story via boing boing and the Wiss gallery via Consumerist.
I think it’s coming down to you get what you pay for and when you go to an on-ground merchant you’re getting to see items as they are before you buy, and now we pay extra for that as consumers.