By DAVID SEGAL NOV. In moments, she found the perfect frames — made by a French company called Lafont — on a Web site that looked snazzy and stood at the top of the search results.

Rodriguez placed an order for both the Lafonts and a set of doctor-prescribed Ciba Vision contact lenses on that site, DecorMyEyes. It was the start of what Ms. Rodriguez would later describe as one of the most maddening and miserable experiences of her life. The next day, a man named Tony Russo called to say that DecorMyEyes had run out of the Ciba Visions. Pick another brand, he advised a little brusquely.

Rodriguez, who lives in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. He got rude, really obnoxious. With the contacts issue unresolved, her eyeglasses arrived two days later.

But the frames appeared to be counterfeits and Ms. Rodriguez, a lifelong fan of Lafont, remembers that even the case seemed fake. When she and Mr. Russo spoke again, she asked about the overcharge and said she would return the frames. Until that moment, Mr. Russo was merely ornery. Then, she said, he threatened to find her and commit an act of sexual violence too graphic to describe in a newspaper. Rodriguez was shaken but undaunted. That day she called Citibank, which administers her MasterCard account, and after submitting some paperwork, she won a provisional victory.

A final determination, she was told, would take 60 days.

As that two-month deadline approached, Mr. But, she said, he began an increasingly nasty campaign to persuade her to contact Citibank and withdraw her dispute. A few hours later, Mr. Russo sent details of what appeared to be a lawsuit filed in Brooklyn. Rodriguez did not respond. Then her cellphone started ringing. An officer assured her that the police would take the issue seriously. Two days later, she received another e-mail from Mr.

I AM WATCHING YOU! That same day an e-mail from Citi arrived. Someone posing as Ms. Rodriguez, she says, had called the bank and said she had changed her mind and no longer wanted a refund.

When I explained the whole story, she said: This has nothing to do with us. Rodriguez had learned a lot more about DecorMyEyes on Get Satisfactionan advocacy Web site where consumers vent en masse. Dozens of people over the last three years, she found, had nearly identical tales about DecorMyEyes: Occasionally, the owner of DecorMyEyes gave his name to these customers as Stanley Bolds, but the consensus at Get Satisfaction was that he and Tony Russo were the same person.

Others dug around a little deeper and decided that both names were fictitious and that the company was actually owned and run by a man named Vitaly Borker. Today, when reading the dozens of comments about DecorMyEyes, it is hard to decide which one conveys the most outrage. It is easy, though, to choose the most outrageous. It was written by Mr. My goal is NEGATIVE advertisement.

Online chatter about DecorMyEyes, even furious online chatter, pushed the site higher in Google search results, which led to greater sales. He closed with a sardonic expression of gratitude: I am in heaven. That would sound like schoolyard taunting but for this fact: The post is two years old.

Between then and now, hundreds of additional tirades have been tacked to Get Satisfaction, ComplaintsBoard. Not only has this heap of grievances failed to deter DecorMyEyes, but as Ms. Which means the owner of DecorMyEyes might be more than just a combustible bully with a mean streak and a potty mouth.

He might also be a pioneer of a new brand of anti-salesmanship — utterly noxious retail — that is facilitated by the quirks and shortcomings of Internet commerce and that tramples long-cherished traditions of customer service, like deference and charm.

No matter where they post their negative comments, it helps my return on investment. So I decided, why not use that negativity to my advantage? THE World Wide Web handed shoppers a few rounds of new ammo, like a way to compare prices and a big podium for ranting about transactions gone wrong. But it gave retailers some weapons, too, and for years consumers have howled that unscrupulous sellers have used the Internet the way bank robbers use ski masks. The Internet Crime Complaint Centeror IC3, a partnership between the F.

The story of DecorMyEyes suggests that 15 years after the birth of online commerce, the Internet is still strewn with trap doors, and that when consumers take a tumble, they are pretty much on their own. Borker is skilled at tunneling under the few obstacles in his way, but he has hardly been hiding. With a few tweaks and added vigilance from an array of companies and public institutions that are supposed to monitor e-commerce thuggery, Mr.

And the most important question: Is it true, as Mr. Borker says, that Google is unable to distinguish between adulatory buzz and scathing critiques when it scours the digital universe and ranks the best and the brightest?

A call to Google was returned by a member of its publicity team, who initially sounded skeptical that a company could leverage online criticism against it for a better position in search results. True, but what about people, like Ms. A crucial factor in Google search results, the spokesman explained, is the number of links from respected and substantial Web sites. The more links that a site has from big and well-regarded sites, the better its chances of turning up high in a search.

The spokesman surfed the Web as he spoke and said he could see scads of links between RipoffReport. But nearly all of those links, as well as those from other consumer sites, were tales of woe and obscenities. Ultimately, the spokesman sidestepped the question of whether utterly noxious retail could yield profits.

The best he could do was decline to call Mr. Borker a liar for saying that it did. Then he recommended talking to Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of the blog Search Engine Land. That, he said, is because the company is perpetually worried that the more it reveals about the vaunted mathematical formula it uses to drive search results, the more people will try to game it.

Sullivan says he does not believe that Google uses sentiment analysis, and he sees potential pitfalls if it were to cash basis net income formula. It could simply become better at incorporating consumer reviews on the main page of its search results.

The company has already started doing that in other realms of commerce. Sullivan said, and apparently the local business wheel was squeaking louder than the online commerce wheel. The strange part is that Google is intimately familiar with the rage inspired by DecorMyEyes.

Another wonders if primates are running the place. Another quotes a DecorMyEyes e-mail to a disgruntled customer which included this pungent adieu: In short, a Google side stage — Google Shopping — is now hosting a marathon reading of DecorMyEyes horror stories. Google is not the only digital enterprise that inadvertently enables Mr.

EBay does, too — by giving Mr. Borker a large and easily available inventory. Borker instructs those sellers to send products to his customers. The problem, several sellers on eBay say, is that Mr. When sellers decline to ship to one of Mr. This seller says he spent countless hours on the phone with eBay reps, persuading them to scrub negative feedback left by Mr.

Borker, and then urging the site to banish whatever user name Mr. Borker operated under at the time. But this seller wonders why eBay has never bounced Mr. Borker off the site for good. VITALY BORKER lives in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn, in a large brick house.

I am standing on that mat a day after my first conversation with Mr. Borker, a chat that ended abruptly after a few minutes when, as he later told me, his phone died. But he was easy to find because his address is posted on DecorMyEyes. A young woman, an assistant with a Russian accent, answers the door. Borker, who emerges a minute later — a lean, 30ish man with light hair, about 6 feet 3 inches tall and wearing a T-shirt, sweatpants and a white baseball cap turned backward.

But as we discuss setting up another time to talk, he invites me in. We sit on a leather sofa forex secrets seminar the first floor of the large brick house and home office where he lives with his wife and 2-year-old child.

Toys are all over the floor. Workers are noisily drilling nearby, renovating the garage. His accent carries a hint of Brooklyn and only the faintest trace of Russia. All those other houses are filled with people, too, and they will come knocking. Selling on the Internet, Mr. Borker says, attracts a new horde of potential customers every day.

Stocks with heavy insider buying would rather you shop elsewhere. View all New York Times newsletters. Borker is amusing company. He is sharp and entertaining, although much of the entertainment comes from the way he flouts the conventions of courtesy, which he does with such a perverse flair that it can seem like a kind of performance art.

Borker sneers and rolls his eyes. He was born in Russia, he reveals, and moved to the United States as a child, although pinning down how old he was when he emigrated proves difficult. His professional career has been varied, to put it mildly. Afterward, he decided to become a cop and says he walked a foot patrol assigned to public housing on Sutter Avenue in Brooklyn.

A woman in the verification department for the area where Mr. Borker says he worked had a different story. She says records show that he was a cadet, which means he worked in an office, not in the field.

So he spent six months at a rather unusual computer programming school. The courses were in English, but all the teachers and students were Russian immigrants, he says. Incourt documents show, he was sued by several luxury manufacturers, including Chanel, that accused him of peddling counterfeits. Borker and two forex secrets seminar defendants.

A few months before Lehman imploded, he says, he quit to focus on Internet sales. He stumbled upon the upside of rudeness by accident. They lied and changed their minds in ways that cost him money, he says, and at some point he started telling them off in how much money does vitaly make a year bluntest of terms. To his amazement, this seemed to better his standing in certain Google searches, which brought in more sales.

DecorMyEyes pops up high what time does derby cattle market car boot start the first page.

The only explanation, he figures, is online chatter about his appalling ways. He swears that a vast majority of his transactions are amicable, and he is adamant eve trading strategies all of the customers he verbally attacks deserve it.

When online fury about DecorMyEyes drops off, he dreams cbot corn trading limits new ways to stoke it. Nah, he ultimately decided. The only real limit on his antics is imposed by Visa and MasterCard. If too many customers successfully dispute charges in a given month, he can be tossed out of their networks, he says.

Precisely how many of these charge-backs is too many is one of the few business subjects that Mr. Until the next month arrives, when he dials it back up value stock options ipo. In other words, Mr.

Borker is perfectly capable of minding his manners. And he forex online broker reviews so, right now, with every order that comes through a store he runs through Amazon.

MasterCard does not inspire such fear, and for good reason. Executives there say Mr. Borker was bounced from its system last year for excessive charge-backs, how much money does vitaly make a year he simply signed up through a different acquirer, as the banks used by merchants are known. Borker eluded the many safeguards that MasterCard has in place to prevent exactly such a round trip is a mystery, says Noah J.

Keep in mind, millions of transactions are conducted on our system every day, with 30 million merchants. But if even one of those transactions is unhappy we want to know about it. MasterCard will look into DecorMyEyes, he adds, which might lead to additional safeguards. Good luck, says Mr. Give him 1 percent. She was raised in Spain but has lived in New York for a decade and has worked as a speech therapist, among other jobs. Rodriguez has a meticulous record of all things Russo.

Sitting at a table with a laptop, she reads some of his e-mails and plays several saved messages left by him on her phone.

It is unmistakably Mr. She recounted the days leading up to and immediately after the unhappy resolution of her Citibank dispute, when her cellphone would ring several times a night, often as late as 3 a. Her goal was to buttress her case against the company by forwarding complaints of other consumers to the authorities. Russo, and he let Ms. She received an e-mail from him that promised, in a vague but creepy way, that she would end up on the evening news.

Those e-mails left her trembling. Because I had no idea what he was capable of. Psychologically, he had gotten to me. Back she went to the police. Again, they were empathetic, but, she says, they told her that they were still trying to build a case. Rodriguez were essentially working opposite sides of the Internet. She wrote to the company and asked why it would associate with an online seller that has mistreated so many consumers.

She never heard back. More recently, Brian Anderson, the Hostek chief executive, replied to an e-mail request for an interview. He wrote that his company was recently made aware of some of Mr. Anderson wrote to confirm that those ties had been severed.

When contacted by a reporter, a Citigroup spokeswoman, Janis Tarter, sounded mortified by the treatment that Ms. Rodriguez says she received from the bank. Tarter said a representative would get in touch with her. Tarter wrote in an e-mail. Two weeks ago, a Citibank representative called Ms. Rodriguez and said that her refund would be restored.

Rodriguez said no apology was offered. After looking into DecorMyEyes, MasterCard said that Mr. Borker has once again been ejected from its system and this time has been placed on a special list that will make it harder for him to get back in.

The company is now investigating why Mr. EBay has conducted its own review and decided to bar Mr. Borker permanently from the site, having found what it called violations of its policies for buyers as well as accounts that were linked to previously suspended accounts.

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A company spokesman, John Pluhowski, said eBay had recently started new systems that would make it easier to track abusive buyers. Borker and have taken steps to ensure that manufacturers and law enforcement authorities are aware of his practices. The New York City detective assigned to Ms. Borker until he had more evidence. Yet the office has apparently been on the case. New York state criminal court records show that Mr.

Borker was arrested on Oct. But a court document sets an arraignment for next month. This will not be Mr. About 18 months ago, he says, a detective showed up at his door and arrested him on an accusation of physically threatening a woman who was a customer. I mention that sending that photo of her apartment building sounds kind of threatening. Nothing but an image he copied off of the Web, from Google Earth, Mr.

Then again, he acknowledges with a sly grin, if Ms. Rodriguez thought that Tony Russo seemed a little scary, that was fine. But in his telling of events, he is her victim, not the other way around. Despite the fear he has inspired, Mr.

He prefers to think of himself as the Howard Stern of online commerce — an outsize character prone to shocking utterances. DURING our initial phone conversation, Mr. Borker described his business as fantastically profitable.

At his home, that seems unlikely. We had moved upstairs by then, to his office, a small room with a computer and walls lined with hundreds of eyeglasses in their cases. These are all returns, he says wearily.

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Prada, Oliver Peoples, Cartier, Tiffany. Each set of eyeglasses represents lost revenue and a brawl. He looks around the room with fatigue and disgust.

Which gets to the real impediment to capitalism, Borker-style, and the reason it is unlikely to catch on: Borker typically works from about 10 a. He describes this grueling regimen of confrontation with a heaviness that is enough to make you want to give him a hug.

Maybe he should find a more mellow job, I suggest — become a shepherd or something. This works for me. The craziness is essentially a niche that would be impossible without the Internet.

And thanks to Google Earth, he can faux-stalk his customers without leaving his house. It is a friend. Borker tells the caller that he is busy today and has to go to court in the evening.

He shakes his head in aggravation. Why is the merchant always wrong? Can the customer ever be wrong? Is that not possible? We say our goodbyes, and I ask him to sit for a photograph. No, too many psychos out there, he explains. Along with some keywords, of course.

An article on Nov. An e-mail from a company spokesman was sent to The New York Times but, because of a technical problem at The Times, was not delivered. A version of this article appears in print on November 28,on Page BU1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web.

For DecorMyEyes, Bad Publicity Is a Good Thing - The New York Times

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