Fraudulent Retail Websites

Cleeds, please go and purchase something from the sites he’s cautioning agains, and then report back if you received your items.p, or if your credit cards start showing suspicious charges shortly after.

you must have never been the victim of fraud or identity theft. Lucky you. Once you become a victim, you will appreciate these type of warnings on a this form of folks who tend to spend a lot of money, many times sight unseen for their audio products.

Thanks for the tip, verdantaudio.

But it's another to allege fraud in the absence of proof.

“Unfortunately, one of my customers actually tried to buy something from them and is dealing with the replacement of his credit cards, etc...  These are scams that fit the formula outline here.  Don't Fall For Fake Shopping Websites - What To Know (malwaretips.com)”

What more proof is needed??

No business can sustain selling below cost for long. I know, tell that to Jeff Bezos!  But he had major venture capital to start with, and that doesn’t apply in high end audio. Chances that these sites are reselling distressed and overstock goods if they’re selling anything at all, or simply phishing to scrape credit card data are high. 

@verdantaudio @cleeds

Thanks for sharing and as the actual OEM it sure makes sense you’d know your own distribution, costs and dealer network. Further having a customer get scammed, the sites copying other sites etc all adds up to fraudulent activities. @cleeds not sure why you’re so adamantly questioning Verdantaudio when he/they are the actual OEM? Tracking grey market activity is pretty easy actually- we did it 20 years ago when we were a large dealer group in NYC/NJ (Harvey Electronics). It’s easy enough to track serial numbers- if you sell s/n 1234 to an authorized dealer "A" and then find s/n 1234 for sale or actually purchased from a non authorized (Grey market dealer "B"), then "A" sold it out the back door to "B". If "B" is advertising the product but never delivers (because it’s a bait / switch item) then its still highly sketchy.