WARNING – DO NOT BUY FROM THIS COMPANY -- This company is NOT a member of the Better Business Bureau and I suspect it is because they know they will receive complaints from their deceptive and fraudulent trade practices. After dealing with them, I have to assume that this is because they are running a scam business. Their camera accessories are way overpriced (a basic camera bag costs $15-20 everywhere else and they charge $60), and their base cameras are underpriced. This place seems to be running the classic bait & switch operation.
I am convinced that this company must post all of these positive comments themselves because all of the negative comments are consistent with what I encountered with this company.
Also, this company’s website shows a picture of a nice looking store, but when you look closer, you will note that the building is computer generated. Also their website has a picture of the inside of the store that shows a huge building with conveyer belts, which I suspect was borrowed from somewhere else on the Internet. The final proof is when you search for information about this company, you discover that they operate under several fronts such as Yellow Bee Photo (YellowBeePhoto.com), All Star Distributions (AllStarDist.com), a.k.a. DigitalShopCart.com, a.k.a. Amazing Tomato Headquarters (AmazingTomato.com). Apparently YellowBee shares a fax with Digital Shopcart. Also some emails from Yellow Bee comes from ilan@allstardist.com (they seems to have fixed this red flag) Yellow Bee's address on PriceGrabber is the 177B address, and Allstardist.com is registered at the 177B address. You can see a picture of the REAL yellowbee location at http://donwiss.com/pictures/BrooklynStores/h0251.htm
Like the other comments complaining about this company, I ordered a camera from Yellowbee online through their website and immediately received a confirmation email. When I checked on the status, it was real vague “in process” so I called and emailed multiple times to see what was going on. I never received any return phone calls and the only email I received indicated that I need to call them in order to verify my billing information BEFORE my order may be processed.
I tried to call and email multiple times in order to allow this verification, but they kept dodging me. They never returned emails or calls even though I warned that I was not happy with their service and I was considering canceling my order.
I discovered all of the complaints AFTER I started having problems and I realized that I was in the process of them about to try and upsell me, so I cancelled my order. I am convinced that they probably never even had this camera in stock and just have these killer deals on the web to lure in people so they can sell other stuff. Although I have gotten through to humans a couple times (after long waits) they promptly transferred me to either extension 406 or 407 which is NEVER answered by a human. Also, when I demanded to speak to a manager, I got some song and dance about how I need to talk to someone in this other department and they quickly transferred me before I had a chance to say anything. Their website says “very easy to reach a manager directly” but I have a sneaky suspicion that this is an operation run by a handful of people out of the hole-in-the-wall office front. I expect that they fabricate all of the positive reviews so that their overall rating is high enough to make it seem legitimate and to bury the negative reviews (which ALL seem to be very consistent in the details of the complaints). Also, please note that although this website claims to have “millions” of customers, it only has about 100 comments on Pricegrabber.com and all of those comments are from August 2006 to the present (indicating that this company has not been around long).
Please pay the extra couple of dollars to shop elsewhere. It is not worth the headaches that you will have just to TRY and save $20.
