Fraudulent Retail Websites

I for one think it commendable reporting.

verdantaudio

For the domestic retailer, it is not grey market for my products.

How do you know it’s not obtaining your products outside official channels?

Have you contacted the dealer? (Its address is on the website.)

@cleeds, why not let this go, it is his speaker brand and he would know better than any of us?  He is doing the community a BIG favor.  

stereo5

why not let this go, it is his speaker brand ...

It’s very unusual for a manufacturer to make an accusation of fraud on A’gon. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it happen before. As a manufacturer, I’d think he has recourse other than a public forum. Given that he’s publicly posted the allegation of fraud, it seems fair to ask simple questions, such as if he’s contacted the entity he’s accused.

There are business that I know of that do things that are unethical and I choose not to deal with them.  Unethical or questionable marketing practices are one thing.  If they can’t fulfill an order, they will refund you.  I don’t like it and choose not to do business with them but it is not fraud.  Those folks go unmentioned and standard, buyer beware is appropriate.  
 

I don’t believe these two sites are actually businesses.  You could have a site up like these with a very small amount of effort. If you look at the extremely poor structure of both of the sites, there was a bulk data upload and they haven’t even gone through the effort  to normalize or fix the menus.  Most of the products are not in the menus and can be found via search.  No legitimate business would be this poor.  Additionally, most of the prices listed are below my cost as the importer and they are not aligned with any manufacturers MAP.  This makes no sense, particularly since the manufacturer would have to sell directly to them at a price that is lower than mine.  That is theoretically possible but it then seems unlikely that the manufacturer would point the site out to me and ask who these people are.  
 

I am sure the domestic one will be de-platformed within a couple months as a result of chargebacks, etc… Shopify will shut it down . In the interim, it can do a lot of harm.  The international one is a bigger problem.  And if these scammers make money on it, those of us who are not scammers will end up playing whack-a-mole as a never ending list of fraudulent sites will pop up.