bnutt
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posted on July 13, 2001 10:27:57 AM
Hello TZers,
I just got off the phone with Peter Allen from the Photopoint office in San Francisco. I was told that Photopoint is dead. There is a minute hope that another company will purchase Photopoint, but the prospects look bleak.
I also does not look as if there will be a way to obtain any of the photos hosted there. I got what seemed to be the run-around. So, it seems as if the internet has proven once again to be not a great business to be in.
Here is the email address to file your question and complaints: [email protected]
Oh well,
"
If it is I am so screwed! I have TONS of pictures up there!
Bonnie
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postcardman
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posted on July 13, 2001 10:52:49 AM
Assuming that it is true ( I attempted to call photopoint several times and could not get anyone to answer the phone) There number is 415 248-5140. I would urge everyone to immediately contact their credit card company in writing (or fax)to dispute the charges for photopoint.com before it is too late.
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kudzurose
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posted on July 13, 2001 11:10:21 AM
I hope those who had pictures stored there will be able to get them - how awful, if you can't!
I came SO CLOSE to signing up with them less than a week ago - maybe I should thank my "guardian angel" that I decided not to?
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blackjack21
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posted on July 13, 2001 12:58:08 PM
Well apparently, my guardian angel is over at the bank with Photopoint, laughing his wings off. I just signed up with Photopoint for their $19.95 paid photo hosting offer two days ago. I've spent a lot of time in the past 48 hours getting my auctions for tonight typed up, and was going to upload all my item's pictures up to Photopoint in a few hours. After being totally shocked by reading
this latest revelation on Auctionwatch, I immediately tried to ftp my photos, just to test the waters. My ftp session was refused,
unlike 2 days ago when I first signed up.
Well, it looks like a call to my credit card company is in order. Nice way to go out, Photopoint, out the back door.
Jack
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clouse
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posted on July 13, 2001 04:14:43 PM
I have used photopoint for over a year with no problems. Took their special when they started charging. I got 1000 pics for 9.95 so not griping about money lost. My real problem is I have about 150 auctions up all with out pics. I had over 550 stored on photopoint. This is almost going to drive me to drink
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paulanduke
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posted on July 13, 2001 08:02:23 PM
This is really sad. I just paid $60.00 for 5,000 photos-lots of ebay auctions and 2 years of life for our granddaughter. Irreplaceable. I sure hope they at least let us get in there and move them. I have 40 items on auction this week and the photos have not been on since Tuesday. I got the Royal Run Around from photopoint and the autoresponses. I'm really ticked.
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rubylane
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posted on July 13, 2001 08:44:47 PM
If they really have already shutdown, with no warning and customers without access to their images stored there, it's so irresponsible I can hardly believe it.
Coming to the realization that your business is not meeting your goals and deciding to shut it down is one thing. But not planning the shutdown and telling your customers in advance?? My conscience would never let me do that.
Maybe they had a disaster, like a fire destroyed all their equipment...
Or, they may have shutdown to protect "their" assets, i.e., their customers' images, while looking for someone to buy them. That's sick too.
No wonder people do not trust Internet companies... many don't deserve it.
Jim
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Islander
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posted on July 13, 2001 10:09:27 PM
I am sincerely sorry to hear about people losing money in this situation. So please bear with me as I ask a question out of sheer curiosity -- what motivates you to pay for hosting? With the exception of WebTV, the vast majority of internet service providers include space for the subscriber to store files, which can easily be used to store photos for eBay. Are there other factors (besides WebTV) that interfere with using an already-paid-for storage capacity?
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wbbell
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posted on July 13, 2001 11:10:06 PM
Islander, the web server for home.com is slow as molasses - and that's when it's up, which is about half the time. These cheapo ISPs with millions of customers just can't buy decent FTP hosts.
I think the home.com TOS now prohibits you using their FTP/WEB sites only as an image host, because of the high bandwidth.
Hopefully, (although clearly NOT in the case of photopoint!), when you pay for image hosting, you are getting a good, fast, reliable service.
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aramatha
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posted on July 13, 2001 11:11:00 PM
Since Pantellic Software Co. powers Photopoint, I went to their site, Pantellic.com. to try and get info on Photopoint.
My messages to Pantellic all came back as "Undeliverable, User Unknown". I am wondering now if perhaps it was not Pantellic that went down and took Photopoint along with them.
If this is the case, I am very hopeful that Photopoint will find a way to get back up.
I also managed to get an auto response from Photopoint Tech Support, so I do believe they are facing severe technical problems at the moment and, hopefully, will soon be able to communicate/fix things.
I sure hope so...
aramatha
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camachinist
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posted on July 13, 2001 11:42:03 PM
The only link I could find that even partially works is their store...
It looks as if the URL points to the same software company mentioned above with the same DNS's so your guess is as good as mine as to what happened...other than what was quoted above...
Couldn't find anything earth-shattering on them over on FC.com either...
Oh, well...
Pat
Update...after running a reverse reverse DNS scan, I found most of the addresses to be dead, forbidden, or not found. There were a few that had initialization pages for Apache server software and two that actually had web pages...
http://198.164.208.25/links.html
which turns out to be a yacht club page...
and...
http://198.164.208.41/
which is the Epson/Photopoint page...
That's all I could find...
[ edited by camachinist on Jul 14, 2001 12:19 AM ]
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dagnnorbie
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posted on July 14, 2001 12:00:30 AM
If Photopoint really has skipped out on everyone, then what they have done amounts to fraud in my opinion. They just sent me an e-mail a couple of weeks ago stating they couldn't continue the free hosting and soliciting me to sign up for paid services, which I did. Sounds like class action time to me.
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dhmagician
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posted on July 14, 2001 04:30:36 AM
dagnorbie: you're going to sue a company who has gone down the tubes (probably for financial reasons?) Rotsa ruck finding a atty who will take the case on a contingency basis. (According to atty boyfriend)
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NothingYouNeed
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posted on July 14, 2001 04:52:04 AM
My sympathies to the photopoint users who had or have auctions listed this week. I have passed over literally dozens of auctions I might have bid on because of no pics. I emailed a couple of the sellers to see if they could send me pics, but have had no response so they are either overwhelmed by similar requests or no longer have the pics on their own hard drives.
It is really scary how dependent we are on technology and the trust we place in our vendors. I think I will stick with a paid hosting site not dependent on advertising revenue alone to support operations. I believe you get what you pay for.
Gerald
"Oh but it's so hard to live by the rules/I never could and still never do."
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Microbes
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posted on July 14, 2001 05:34:47 AM
This should be a wake up call to everyone that keeps asking about "free picture hosting". If they can't do it for $19.95 and stay in business, are you going to trust your auction pictures to a "free picture host"?
LOts of dotcom's are going to get "the water shaken out of them" this year.
Who Need's a stink'n Sig. File?
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blackjack21
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posted on July 14, 2001 06:25:22 AM
Hello. Since I just got spanked for $19.95 three days ago by Photopoint, I'm in limbo
with no real place to host my ebay photos.
Can anybody recommend a hosting service that is reasonably priced, that doesn't change the name of your photos when you upload them, and is not going to rip-off millions of dollars from trusting customers?
Thanks for any tips!
Jack
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reston_ray
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posted on July 14, 2001 07:46:27 AM
I've been using www.PAIR.com.
Sent there a year ago when I was having problems with the previous site I had been using.
I'm paying $4.95 per month which I believe is the lowest available fee from them.
100% satisfied.
But this incident makes me realize I really don't know a thing about them. Anyone have background on PAIR? They seem to be a site involved in more sizable web site hosting.
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vidpro2
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posted on July 14, 2001 07:57:00 AM
Here's a directory of image hosting services: http://www.auctionbytes.com/bin/bizdirectory/biz-directory.pl?category=auctioncountersimagehosting.
vidpro2
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oldfashioned
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posted on July 14, 2001 08:19:10 AM
I found my Photopoint gallery-shared pics at http://photo.epson.com/gallery/categorylist.html. So if you'd ever shared out any of your albums to the gallery while on photopoint, you may be able to find yours there, too.
They don't appear to be linkable for auction purposes. Wow, so many folks angry over at the eBay image/HTML board!
Am now in the process of burning my images from the epson site onto CD's from my gallery album and evaluating alternate photo hosting sites. Gr-r-r-r - I paid them the $9.99 special at the beginning of the year for 1000 photos.
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camachinist
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posted on July 14, 2001 09:21:06 AM
Reston_Ray
My research bears out your hypothesis...
I found a number of sites they host in a reverse DNS scan I did.....they've been in business since '95 and most of their addresses have been registered since '96.
Your basic FTP plan is very competitive, IMO....
Our business web site is with WyattWeb, which is competitive in the higher end packages but they don't offer a low-end package such as yours...
If serving reliability has been good (no complaints from customers about broken pix), I'd say good choice...and likely to continue to be so...
Pat
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rnrgroup
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posted on July 14, 2001 09:51:18 AM
More contact info for Photopoint -
http://www.auctionguild.com/generic.html?pid=62
Answering machine working, no calls returned. Can use address to attempt to file complaints to various public and goverment agencies in Canada. Anyone have a US address? Email us and we will add them - Rosalinda
TAGnotes - daily email synopsis about the Online Auction Industry
http://www.topica.com/lists/tagnotes
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satnrose
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posted on July 14, 2001 10:46:34 AM
I have no illusions. I think Photopoint is dead. But I would truly like to see some actual real live honest-to-god hardcore information on the subject instead of rumours and a dead link.
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rnrgroup
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posted on July 14, 2001 11:00:10 AM
A website that has been gone since the 12th is no rumor. Photo images not appearing since the 12th is no rumor. Phone calls unreturned and an operator that is not there is no rumor. The first post of this thread says, "I just got off the phone with Peter Allen from the Photopoint office in San Francisco. I was told that Photopoint is dead". So unless you are doubting the word of the poster or of the Photopoint employee - and all the evidence of your own eyes - there is no rumor there either. -Rosalinda
TAGnotes - daily email synopsis about the Online Auction Industry
http://www.topica.com/lists/tagnotes
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dagnnorbie
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posted on July 14, 2001 11:08:56 AM
dhmagician
I'm not going to sue anyone. Not my style. But it seems with all of the lawsuit crazy people and greedy attroneys (present company's boyfriends excluded) out there, something is likely to happen. I don't believe for a minute Photopoint let ALL of their assets dwindle before they jumped ship. That would be down right un-American.
Yeow!!! Good thing Sara isn't watching the posts with all of those "promotional in nature" messsages being tossed around.  )
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thinkinghat
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posted on July 14, 2001 11:11:26 AM
Well this stinks,I lost 1000 pics stored at Photopoint, been having a heck of a time with
Andale since the 4TH of July. Im moving all my images as we speak to auctionimages.net The owner seems fair and helpful!
[ edited by thinkinghat on Jul 14, 2001 11:45 AM ]
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satnrose
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posted on July 14, 2001 11:18:12 AM
mrgroup: I have no illusions.
Has there been a TAGnotes article about it? AW? AP? Maybe I missed it.
I've been following the commentary here right from the beginning. I've also been following the eBay HTML board, and Usenet.
Have the owners of PhotoPoint communicated with anyone after the initial phone call?
I just want to see something in print about it.
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rnrgroup
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posted on July 14, 2001 11:54:51 AM
We were hoping to get a response from the company before publishing in TAGnotes but it will be in tonights issue regardless. At least some folks might get the opportunity to do a chargeback on the CCs if they made payment that way. Rumor is a different thing altogether. I sympathize with your desire to see some info in writing preferable from the company, but it looks as if it will not be forthcoming. -Rosalinda
TAGnotes - daily email synopsis about the Online Auction Industry
http://www.topica.com/lists/tagnotes
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micheneraddict
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posted on July 14, 2001 12:14:18 PM
Well this has been one heck of a week. Photopoint is dead and just read on another thread that Auction Amigo will be ceasing operations on Sep 1.
There goes both my photo and auction listing in the span of 2 days. I hate to say it, but I'm contemplating a return to Auctionwatch because they keep everything under one roof and have been fairly steady for quite a while.
Does anyone have any suggestions for a good program that works offline, hosts images and is reasonably priced?
I was very happy with AuctionWatch before they started charging. I don't mind the .05 but for some reason the 1% just gets me.
Micheneraddict
Micheneraddict
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myoldtoy
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posted on July 14, 2001 12:16:21 PM
while 9.95 is not gonna bankrupt any of us; your c/c carrier will most likely absorb it; at least mine did after a phone call and an explanation of what is possibly[probably] already happened....now, one thread alluded to this being "down-right un-American." wholeheartely i agree. and, thats what makes this business sometimes less than fun--those b------s who prey on us....and i support the opinion that "its no rumor after having been down since the 12th." in fact rigor mortis set in that day....you see, if your business "gets closed" for some reason, you advise your partners, like ebay, to the problem and they come to your rescue/support--did you read ebay's announcement on the 12th--and i am sure that is all they[ebay mgment] knew....so, even on the 12th, the silence behind p/point's closed doors in this instance was deafening....i just hope enuff of us heard it, to rush to the c/c carrier for relief...
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hcross
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posted on July 14, 2001 12:42:30 PM
I don't see the need for all of these services all of you are paying good money for. I have templates saved in Front Page, I just add the lines for the description and copy and paste into the ebay sell your item form. I can get an auction listed in no time. I have my own website, so I just leave my photos there. You would be better off getting one of those cheapo webhosting plans and putting your pictures on there. I use ebay's picture service if I need to.
I also have emails saved to my desktop, fill in the email address and auction number and it is ready to go. You don't need all of those services, I run a lot of auctions and can still get all of this done in no time.
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