ONLINE SHOPPING BULLSHIT

gygax = roffle

FROM APPLE

mindboggling

Vitaly Borker is such a spam name.
I can't believe this guy exists!

it's true he sounds like a cartoon.

"do you think I would think twice about urinating all over your frame and then returning it? C'mon."

omg

that's a litany of wtf

negative endorsement

^ i've been the guru of this shit for 15 years in various jobs, now i got a name for it

i bought from a company nearly that crazy - this was like 8 years ago - they seemed legit though, selling refurbed laptops online. the laptop stopped booting properly within a couple days. what followed was them giving me the runaround, this jerky guy in brooklyn kept telling me "trust me it'll be fine, it's no big deal, i fix these things for a living and it's nothing, you need to take this up with the manufacturer" and etc. i'm like dude if you know all this tech stuff why the hell are you taking sales calls

finally by luck, i got a woman employee on the phone and she gave me a return auth #. i think she wasn't supposed to do that, but i quit calling, shipped the thing back and got my credit card company to reverse charges. i was so angry. went around to every ratings site i could find and wrote scathing reviews.. now i wonder if it helped their shady business any, to have done that!

difference here seems to be that the owner of this eyeglass website, upon hearing your complaint, would start calling you with threats of violence if you didn't stop disputing the charge, and maybe even send you a picture of your home/apartment with the frightening message "i'm watching you."

article is blowin the fuck up on twitter right gdamn

btw before i buy something that costs any substantial amount from an unknown site i google the name of the company and 'sucks' #protip

yeah, the calls are ridiculous! you'd have to figure the person is blowing smoke if they did that. i mean, over a $400 pair of eyeglasses? people are crazy

Web advocacy sites like Get Satisfaction are vast and score high on Google’s augustness scale.

lmao nytimes.com

We say our goodbyes, and I ask him to sit for a photograph. No, too many psychos out there, he explains. Besides, he doesn’t need his face in the newspaper. What he needs is his company’s name visible for all the world to see — and all the search engines to crawl — in the online version of The New York Times. Along with some keywords, of course.

“Just throw in ‘designer eyeglasses,’ ‘designer eyewear’ and a couple different brand names,” he says, “and I’m all set.”

i think this guy miscalculates the impact of this article on his business. i imagine the police and prosecutors and credit-card companies and key institutions will now, given the push provided by the NYT, be much more aware of, and aggressive/hostile toward, this vendor.

but who knows? not me; i thought the heat would be good.

the sad thing is, though, he's clearly closed and started businesses under fake identities already, so he's more or less prepared for this. good story tho

not really related but: what is up with those penny auction sites, it seems like they're some kind of bizarre legal loophole to facilitate gambling

shocked the article didnt touch on social tbqh

social?

this man is amazing

Reminds me of the Brooklyn camera shops doing healthy bait and switch refurb of grey-market stuff.

^^^ yeah, brooklyn camera shops have been doing this for years, but not so aggressively?

social?

― Stop Non-Erotic Cabaret (Abbbottt), Saturday, November 27, 2010 7:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

just like in the future facebooked internet utopia this negatory seo wouldnt even be close to possible cause all yr purchases are generated by friend recommends is the idea, social shopping they call it, its one of the next big things

Oh man, was just about to bump this to post that. Best Times story I've read in a long time.

This guy is going to have people suing him, harassing him at his house. The pressure on law enforcement will be enormous to do something as well. Banks and credit card companies will do everything they can to avoid him. But someone else (or maybe Vitaly) will figure out how to do this from offshore and there will be no stopping it.

yeah. but if that (anything short of arrest) happens, he says he'll just use a friend's name, and give the friend 1% of the new company.

his problem is he doesnt know where the line is, im sure their are companies doing this much more subtly

i mean all youd really need to do is have bad qc and not give a shit abt customer service, both of those steps would lower costs and inspire negative web feedback, this guy is waisting money actively harassing people

yeah. but if that (anything short of arrest) happens, he says he'll just use a friend's name, and give the friend 1% of the new company.

― Daniel, Esq., Sunday, November 28, 2010 11:47 AM Bookmark

http://brooklyn.blockshopper.com/property/3087270008/56_beaumont_street/

Vitaly Borker
56 Beaumont Street
Brooklyn, NY 11235

Interesting point from a savvy Felix Salmon commenter:
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/11/29/counterparties-257/#comments

I was intrigued by that DecorMyEyes story too, but the technical thesis that bad reviews can boost PageRank was baffling. I even double-checked with the founder of GetSatisfaction, and as he put it “The article approaches SEO in near-mystical terms. Black Magic”
http://twitter.com/tempo/status/89562240 57901056

Almost every site that allows user input, including GetSatisfaction, wraps links in rel=”nofollow”. This tells search engines to not count the link as a vote for the purposes of ranking search results. The prime motivation is to remove the incentive to plaster forums and other places where users can create content with links to boost PageRank.

The story itself was well-written and worth telling, but I was left very frustrated that they’d decided to base it around a bogus theory that should have been caught by anyone with basic technical knowledge of SEO.

does google pay any attention to no follow tags tho... ... ...

I was left very frustrated that they’d decided to base it around a bogus theory that should have been caught by anyone with basic technical knowledge of SEO.

i think it was more based around this fellow's intentionally shocking, reprehensible business practices ("I know where you live," wtf!)

this crook = anecdotal lead right? larger issue = cybershopping - still scary? new hook = any publicity is good publicity due to an algorithm (poor followthru here)

ONLINE SELLING BULLSHIT: guy who won my Macbook Auction last Monday hasn't paid, if I have to re-sell it'll probably be too late for anyone to buy it for Christmas, so I'll get less

still a great read though! it is hilarious to read knowing this arrogant schmuck has no idea what's coming his way now, if he had just said 'no comment/speak to my lawyers/every business has dissatisfied customers' this story has little impact and maybe even never sees print. and unlike simply selling fake rolexes on the street or whatever this involves interstate commerce and mail fraud all it takes is one bored federal prosecutor looking to boost his numbers to take this fucker down.

exactly ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^. hubris and lack of self-awareness brings down a lot of people.

rip he did it for the lulz

Well this was predictable:

http://moneywatch.bnet.com/saving-money/blog/devil-details/online-retailer-charged-with-fraud-threats/3478/

Guess who's back: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/25/business/eyeglass-vendor-imprisoned-for-terrorizing-consumers-is-accused-of-fraud.html

Another customer, identified in the complaint as Victim-8, clicked on an OpticsFast link that generated a shipping label to mail in glasses for repair. When he decided against using the label and refused to pay for it, OpticsFast sent him hundreds of emails, including 456 in a single day. Hundreds of them had “I WIN!!!” in the subject line.

Efforts to reach Mr. Borker at the time were unsuccessful, although he was not keeping a particularly low profile. Earlier in the year, he posted a GoFundMe plea for $1,000 to buy long skis for an April trip to Utah. His short skis, he said, would not suffice in deep-powder snow.

“Clearly, I don’t want to pay for this upgrade,” he wrote, in what by his standards qualified as a charm offensive. “Please give me money.”