Photopoint ShutdownThis LOOKS legitimate, but I have NOT been able to personally verify it at http://www.herald.ns.ca/.
ocean2sand (222)(view author's auctions)
7:56am December 19, 2001
The following article is from the local Haifax Newspaper I thought some of you might be interested in:
Wednesday, December 19, 2001 Back The Halifax Herald Limited
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Shutdown leaves PhotoPoint subscribers out of the picture
By Bruce Erskine / Business Reporter
A Toronto photographer is one of many shutterbugs around the world upset with PhotoPoint, a Halifax-based dot-com photo-sharing firm.
"I think it's unconscionable," says Ingrid Romanowsky, adding that she can't retrieve digital photo images that she paid to have stored on PhotoPoint's Web site.
"I haven't been able to contact anyone with the business."
PhotoPoint subscribers from as far away as Vietnam and Holland have also contacted this newspaper about the shutdown of the company's site.
Robert Boudreau of Saint John had about 800 of his railroad photos in albums on the PhotoPoint site and used it to share images with other railway enthusiasts around the world.
Mr. Boudreau said Tuesday that the site seemed to go down last Thursday or Friday, and he thought at first it was a simple technical glitch.
He said he paid $19.95 US to use the site but wasn't too concerned about the money, although he said it took a lot of time to scan his photos in to it.
But he said he'd heard that people who used the site to post photos for eBay and other online auctions could be seriously out of pocket due to the closure.
"There was no notice," he said, or provisions to transfer photos to similar Web sites. "People would love to get their images back."
PhotoPoint operated one of the world's most popular photo Web sites, with 1.6 million members. At one point, the firm had hoped to be listed on the Nasdaq exchange.
In July, Photopoint Corp. (USA), developed by Halifax-based Pantellic Software in 1998 but operated as a separate U.S. company since 1999, was reacquired by Pantellic after being taken over by liquidators in California.
The PhotoPoint Web site shut down briefly during the reacquisition.
Pantellic CEO Dale Gass said in July that he'd been deluged with phone calls after that shutdown. PhotoPoint site users were demanding repayment of the $19.95 US subscription fee. He said at the time that the firm would honour those memberships.
Ms. Romanowsky, who said her annual subscription fees had gone up to $45 US, said PhotoPoint has an obligation to tell subscribers what is going on with the firm and should return their photographic images.
"Companies just can't do this," she said, adding that she doesn't have any backup for the images she stored on the PhotoPoint site.
"I'm very concerned," she said. "It's not right to take people's images away from them."
Pantellic reportedly had 54 employees in Halifax in July, but its glass doors at the Maritime Centre were locked on Tuesday and the reception area was deserted.
A woman in blue jeans who answered a buzzer at the door but didn't identify herself said she couldn't comment on the firm's status.
She said the company's staff had been reduced to about 18 people recently but that she was the only person there on Tuesday.
She took a message for Mr. Gass, who was supposed to be in the office sometime Tuesday, but he didn't call back.
Subsequent phone calls to the office were taken by an answering machine.
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Copyright © 2001 The Halifax Herald Limited
