New tour group: Stolen Photos

Posted on Jan 08, 2009 under xn--zqqs84h3is.com | edit
  • http://www.h1-intercept.com

    I was sent that this evening. Some may want to check the pictures scrolling on there as some look rather familar(not to mention the ones of mine I know are stolen).


  • Posing as a potential customer looking for a chase tour group to ride with, I sent them an email with several questions. I'll be very surprised if I get a response back.

    Would be very curious what you hear back. The fact there is absolutely no info about the guides is an obvious major red flag. Also noticed in the "the hummer" section that it says that each passenger has their own window and easy excess to the doppler radar. I wonder though if anyone has access?:rolleyes:


  • First off, I would like to thank the people who had the decency to call and e-mail without all the yelling and cussing.

    Every photo on my site was personally taken by me, given to me by fellow storm chasing friends or gotten royalty-free off of www.istockphoto.com (http://www.istockphoto.com), www.bigstockphoto.com (http://www.bigstockphoto.com), and www.fotosearch.com (http://www.fotosearch.com). Please let me know which photos are yours and I'd be happy to take your word for it, and remove them. You may also want to check the above royalty-free websites and see if they are making money off your work.

    And last, to whoever hacked my website, crashed my server and deleted everything. That was kind of juvenile don't you think?

    Sincerely,
    Caleb Bailey
    Info@H1-Intercept.com
    www.H1-Intercept.com (http://www.H1-Intercept.com)

    Whoever hacked your site only served great justice to those you have ripped off and to those who you potentially will rip off. Forfeit your Hummer, FX1 and other equipment to Mike H., since he is the one who got you business.

    Nice touch on the "check out our competition" phrase I saw last night. Those guys have been doing storm chasing tours for years, have seen probably 100 more tornadoes than yourself, yet you try and mislead someone, to try and take their hard-earned money out of their hands.

    Tour companies need to get together and list "legit" companies on a public site, or they may eventually see business drop, due to scam-artists like these.


  • Is it really that easy to start a tour company? I'm starting to wonder why I'm not doing it. $2300 per person for a week? Heck, I know I could find people to pay that to fill up 2 seats in my car. That would be a pretty sweet deal actually. Why am I not doing it? Who knows. Seems like easy money to pay for chasing all spring. If all these fly-by-night companies can do it why couldn't legit chasers. I mean look at them, even the shady photoshopping tour groups are selling out their seats every year.


  • (I'm getting off topic here, mods feel free to split this off)

    The insurance and liability issues would be expensive but easy to take care of with good coverage and an ironclad waiver, just like whitewater rafters and skydivers do hundreds of times a day.

    The main obstacle I know of is what Steve Marshall pointed out before - the Federal regulations on commercial for-hire transportation, which for a chase tour are very prohibitive in cost and logistics (IE, getting a CDL, the 12-hour restriction on driving, rigorous vehicle inspections, etc). Apparently most tour companies either have been exempt from these somehow or are 'flying under the radar' so to speak. I'd be interested to hear how tour companies are dealing with this!

    I would never go out and run a 15-passenger 'rollover of death' van operation, but two storm-hungry people riding in my back seats while I and a chase partner enjoy an all-expense paid chase vacation - are you kidding? I'd do that in a heartbeat. Apparently there is enough demand that the competition issue is moot.


  • I have an even BETTER idea, Caleb. Take your own storm photos and put those on your website.

    You know how many chasers on this board have royalty-free or stock on their sites that I can think of ... none off the top of my head. As in zero point zero percent. But it's nice you came on board to try and straighten it out and offer an apology. Typical.


  • Those of mine probably raise some flags and probably do more harm than good at this point, lol(so many have seen them and may find them odd on there). Those I know you didn't take and I'm 99.9% sure did not get from stock sites(odds are too bad you'd happen to select all those that were in the e-mail chain while browsing a stock site). So you either recieved the e-mail like everyone else or "someone gave them to you". I'd be careful to use only what you know is ok to use. A friend saying they took them or that they are ok to use, is not enough. Or at least it certainly isn't always enough.


  • My personal favorite set of pictures are the banner of all dust devils when you go to the news section. I guess when you are done seeing all the tornadoes in the world in that sweet hummer, they go and chase dust swirls too! Awesome!



  • Mike -- Seems a DMCA takedown notice to their ISPs would erode them through attrition. Their current ISP is here (http://www.whoishostingthis.com/http://www.h1-intercept.com/).

    Alternatively if you rename this thread subject line to include their tour group name then it will get indexed by Google... and we do rank pretty high... only one notch under Mr. Faidley.

    Tim


  • Only problem is they'll see this thread in their referrers and click over, since this is in W&C.

    I thought of that, but hopefully they respond before seeing this :D


  • If I was a customer, I absolutely would not pay $2300 to someone who doesn't even have enough experience or photos to show customers what you have seen in person and frankly, it seems rather misleading to me.

    Darin beat me to the point.

    Maybe they can use this quote as their official business slogan as it didn't take long for this guy to write his future reputation with the rest of us. You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.Abraham Lincoln (http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Abraham_Lincoln/), (attributed)
    16th president of US (1809 - 1865)


  • I applaud Caleb for coming here and dealing with the criticism on Stormtrack, whether deserved or not. That is a step above from sequestering oneself in anonymity like a few tour operators have done.

    Everyone keep in mind our TOS prohibits ad-hominem attacks. Factual stuff (like the photos being Mike H's) is fair game... attacks on one's personality or reputation is not.

    Tim


  • ewwww...that one photo-shopped one looks pretty sickly/crappy. Never fails that some ed photos get hoodwinked without credits on this one. Kind of the state of this world these days. One thing that can't be done is faking tornadoes on the actual chase. I would also never start up a chase company without having years of seasoning under the belt. One wrong turn and its a tragedy...which undoubtedly would have severe domino effects on the chaser community and other established chase tour companies.


  • That's hilarious! H1-Intercept. Great name for a storm chasing company.

    Silverlining tours should rename their operation "Ford Econoline Intercept" :D

    I think I'll start "Corolla Intercept Tours".

    I mean, the vehicle IS the most important part of storm chasing, right? ;)


  • Caleb,

    It would be in your best interest if you had a section on your site that shows us who you are. $2300 is a lot of money, and when the person asking for $2300 doesn't offer up any information at all on who they are, that's a bit shady. If I were someone going to be going on a chase tour, I would be picking the tour based on who the guide(s) are, what their qualifications are, and how much experience they have in storm chasing. You offer none of that information.


  • First off, I would like to thank the people who had the decency to call and e-mail without all the yelling and cussing.

    Every photo on my site was personally taken by me, given to me by fellow storm chasing friends or gotten royalty-free off of www.istockphoto.com, www.bigstockphoto.com, and www.fotosearch.com. Please let me know which photos are yours and I'd be happy to take your word for it, and remove them. You may also want to check the above royalty-free websites and see if they are making money off your work.

    And last, to whoever hacked my website, crashed my server and deleted everything. That was kind of juvenile don't you think?

    Sincerely,
    Caleb Bailey
    Info@H1-Intercept.com
    www.H1-Intercept.com


  • Those of mine shouldn't be on any stock sites, unless someone else put them there. You'd think stock sites would require at least something higher res so they have a better idea it wasn't taken off the internet(since I know those of mine aren't high res anywhere). If a friend gave them, did they say they took them and to go ahead and use them?

    http://www.h1-intercept.com/Cloud15.jpg

    http://www.h1-intercept.com/Cloud05.jpg

    http://www.h1-intercept.com/Cloud07.jpg

    http://www.h1-intercept.com/Cloud09.jpg

    http://www.h1-intercept.com/Cloud11.jpg


  • Sweeeeet .... lots about the Hummer, but who are the guides? From what I can tell, the website is 99.85% Hummer-related, and .15% weather.

    In addition to the stolen property, some of the photos look slightly doctored. But of course, anyone living in Maryland is an excellent candidate for storm chase guide.

    (Do these people actually make money at this?)


  • I guess we "Could" find out real soon, as Caleb Bailey is the newest member to Stormtrack and is viewing this thread

    Paul Sherman


  • Not only that, thread here are usually indexed within a day or two.


  • The domain is registered to Caleb Bailey.

    You know it's a quality endeavor when you can Google "Caleb Bailey storm chaser" and come up with zero related hits.


  • well as of now here is what the tour site is showing..That didnt take long. If the site is actually crashed wouldnt we get a unable to connect message instead of a banner saying "recovering"?? hmmmm. Sounds like it was self induced.

    Recovering from a server crash
    please bear with us


  • You beat me to it too.
    If you don't have enough photos and video of storms/tornadoes of your own to fill up your website, then you have absolutely no business taking other people out to see tornadoes IMO. It is extremely misleading to post all these pictures of tornadoes and storms that aren't yours. Potential customers are obviously going to think those are your pictures and they are going to think you are extremely experienced as a result. You are essentially conning people in to thinking you are an experienced chaser and you know what you're doing. From what I saw, all you bring to the table is a hummer and that ain't gonna get you on tornadoes. I would be more than a little pissed off if I paid two grand to go on a chase trip and found out I got swindled. If you want to do chase tours, have at it. I have no problem with that, but be forthcoming and honest about your experience and accomplishments. Don't screw people over by misleading them about who you are and what you've done. If you haven't seen hardly any tornadoes and you've botched the forecasts on big days, tell people that. Doing what you were doing is no better than being a con artist IMO. If you want other people's pictures on your site, then credit them openly, so at least customers don't get suckered into thinking they are your own. Those pictures are part of your resume on a site that is selling chase tours and you forged it. Whether you did that knowingly or not, I don't know, but I can't imagine why you would do it unless you didn't have pictures and video of your own (which ought to waive all sorts of red flags to potential customers).


  • Only problem is they'll see this thread in their referrers and click over, since this is in W&C.


  • Every photo on my site was personally taken by me, given to me by fellow storm chasing friends or gotten royalty-free off of www.istockphoto.com (http://www.istockphoto.com), www.bigstockphoto.com (http://www.bigstockphoto.com), and www.fotosearch.com (http://www.fotosearch.com). Please let me know which photos are yours and I'd be happy to take your word for it, and remove them.

    Have you thought about why you have to buy photos to put on your website? Apparently not, because you are starting a tour company. If I was a customer, I absolutely would not pay $2300 to someone who doesn't even have enough experience or photos to show customers what you have seen in person and frankly, it seems rather misleading to me. Atleast Tradd goes to the effort of Photoshopping their tornadoes lol.


  • You know it's a quality endeavor when you can Google "Caleb Bailey storm chaser" and come up with zero related hits.

    Posing as a potential customer looking for a chase tour group to ride with, I sent them an email with several questions. I'll be very surprised if I get a response back.


  • but who are the guides?


    The domain is registered to Caleb Bailey.


  • Welcome to Stormtrack, Caleb.

    Stop stealing photos.


  • Is it really that easy to start a tour company? I'm starting to wonder why I'm not doing it. $2300 per person for a week? Heck, I know I could find people to pay that to fill up 2 seats in my car. That would be a pretty sweet deal actually. Why am I not doing it? Who knows. Seems like easy money to pay for chasing all spring. If all these fly-by-night companies can do it why couldn't legit chasers. I mean look at them, even the shady photoshopping tour groups are selling out their seats every year.
    Just make sure you carry insurance on all your passengers. It will only take one litigious individual to sue you and your life is essentially over.

    It amazes me that this hasn't happened to more of the chase tours.

    Those who do run chase tours, how do you prevent this?







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