• by Shankar Gupta , March 14, 2006

PriceRitePhoto, which last year saw its site delisted from several comparison shopping engines after angry Web users complained, has returned to Yahoo Shopping and PriceGrabber.com under a new name--BarclaysPhoto.com.

News of the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based camera store's return to these shopping engines was first reported by a tech blogger who goes by the pseudonym Thomas Hawk, who started a firestorm in the blogosphere late last year by recounting his mistreatment at the hands of PriceRitePhoto's customer service team. The blogger alleged that he was verbally abused on the phone and threatened.

In response to Hawk's post, netizens bombarded the company with thousands of prank calls, as well as denial-of-service attacks and viruses, a company spokesman told OnlineMediaDaily in December. Shortly after the blog post, the company was delisted from Yahoo Shopping and PriceGrabber.com.

Now the company is back on both engines, however. Sean Kane, PriceGrabber.com's business director of technology and entertainment, said the company was able to remain on the engine because it initially had two separate online stores--PriceRitePhoto.com, which was delisted after they failed a customer service test performed by PriceGrabber staff, and CameraMall.com, which passed a similar test, and was allowed to remain.

According to Kane, earlier this month, CameraMall.com requested a name change to BarclaysPhoto.com. PriceGrabber granted the request, and also allowed the company to keep its feedback history, which rated the store at 2.5 out of 5 stars. Moreover, Kane said, the store will not have its products listed on the PriceGrabber site itself, but only on PriceGrabber affiliates.

The BarclaysPhoto.com site is listed on Yahoo Shopping, and has products for sale in Yahoo's shopping engine, but has no reviews, positive or negative. Yahoo did not return calls for comments.

Kane added that PriceGrabber is carefully monitoring BarclaysPhoto.com for signs of further problems. "They're on our priority watch list," he said. "When we note anything suspicious, we verify and take appropriate action from there." However, Kane said, PriceGrabber does not take into account information from other parts of the Web when evaluating a merchant--only the company's own tests and records are used.

Hawk told OnlineMediaDaily that he would like to see sites like PriceGrabber.com and Yahoo Shopping more rigorously evaluate the merchants they list.

BarclaysPhoto.com did not return calls for this story.