Anyone ever do buisness with Butterfly Photo?

[TheMightyFavog]

I saw a nice camcorder I want with accesories for about 110 dollars cheaper than the sorce I was looking at. Are these people any good?

[Lance_Boyle]

1. careful - do your homework first

Online camera shops, especially those based in and around Brooklyn, have reputations. Most of them not so good.

Here is a link to a slashdot article about online camera shop scams: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/01/0359252 - you might find some of the comments informative.

Here is a link to a picture of Butterfly Photo: http://donwiss.com/pictures/BrooklynStores/h0098.htm - note that the same physical location is also "buydigitaldirect.com" and "DigitaleTailor.com." Don's commentary about meeting the warehouse manager DOES make Butterfly appear slightly less shady than some.

Also, a simple google search for "butterfly photo" and "scam" reveals varying opinions on multiple price-comparison sites. Some say good, some say bad. Some of those saying good might be paid astroturfers, or the scammers themselves, if Butterfly is indeed one of the scam shops.

My recommendation would be to give them a call and talk to them - keep your bullshit detector on its highest sensitivity setting - and definitely do not give them any personal information or credit card numbers if the aforementioned BS detector gives even the slightest blip of shadiness.

[ET Awful]

2. Look them up on resellerratings.com

Odds are they're a rip-off outfit.

Also, note that the rip-off shops often use names similar to reputable dealers, such as the "buydigitaldirect.com" referenced above. There is a highly reputable dealer called buydig.com and some people might easily confuse the two.

edit: Resellerratings seems to be having issues with their site right now.

[TheMightyFavog]

3. I came too late. I bought from them..

They were quite pushy abou selling me more accesories, though. Epinions, and other site seemes to have them rated pretty good.

[ET Awful]

4. Good Luck!

I'm not familiar with them at all.

I've dealth with quite a few vendors that were really good, and so far managed to elude the bad ones.

I can always comfortably recommend:

B&H Photo
Beach Photo
Buydig.com (same company as Beach actually)
digitalfotoclub.com

All of those are high-class outfits with great service.