Justice Is Served

One thing you may or may not know about me is that occasionally, I lapse into periods of severe idiocy where I disengage my brain and make terrible decisions.

This happened about a month and a half ago when I bought a new digital camera from YellowBeePhoto.com. Yellow Bee was selling the camera I wanted for about $30 less than anyone else, and their website looked legit enough, so I placed the order.

The next day, I received an email telling me that I needed to call them to verify some billing information. When I called them, they basically pulled a bait and switch on me and told me that while they didn’t have the camera I had ordered, they did have a very similar “Pro Kit” version for about $35 more that was supposedly the same camera model but with a few upgrades (such as the composition of the shell, the quality of the lens, etc.).


Because (as I mentioned above) I am sometimes an idiot, I reluctantly agreed to this, and ordered the upgraded version. Of course, when I received it, there were no upgrades (there was no mention of a “Pro Kit” on the box or any of the documentation); I had received the camera that I wanted, but had paid $35 more than the price on the website.

Had I not been an idiot, I would’ve done a little research ahead of time and discovered that Yellow Bee is notorious for this sort of thing, and sometimes does even worse. I actually got off pretty easy because I got the camera I originally wanted and for about the same price I could have gotten it elsewhere, but I was still pretty annoyed that I had been played.

One of the good things about the internet though is that it allows ripped-off customers to band together and actually do something about it.

Apparently, Yellow Bee Photo is just one of many semi-fraud store fronts in Brooklyn, NY that rip people off with unscrupulous business practices, who have now been caught thanks to the vigilance of the Web. One guy even went out and took photographs of all these bogus stores (the picture above is of Yellow Bee; it is in the “B West End Ave” suite).

And then yesterday I received the best news. My buddies at Yellow Bee sent me this email:

“To make your shopping at Yellow Bee Photo a much greater experience our website will be off until further notice. We do apologize for any inconvenience caused. You will be notified as soon as possible as to when the website will be re-opened for your shopping needs.”

I don’t think the words came out quite how they meant, but they were certainly right: shopping at Yellow Bee Photo is a much better experience if their website doesn’t work at all.

The Final Score: Western Civilization 1, Yellow Bee Photo 0.