Now that we’ve dealt with that mind-blowing revelation, allow me to tell the short story:
One of our distributors was victim to a credit card fraud scheme, and sold a lot of our inventory out to fraudsters. Normally, this is a “them” problem and I don’t have to get involved.
However, those frauds have started hopping on our Amazon listing and greatly diminishing the value of the listing. At the time of this writing, there are five sellers. As they get banned, new ones replace them.
The problem is that the fraudsters appear to be in a price war with one another and the price tag on the merchandise keeps dropping lower and lower. We have seen sales tank on the listing. I’m sitting on inventory that’s never going to move at this pace, because the fraudsters’ price is now below cost of goods.
Now, we don’t want to burn bridges with our distributor, but I don’t see another way to right this ship. Their fraud problem has become mine.
I tried test buys, it’s authentic product. I tried contacting Amazon, but I got a magic 8-ball response.
We have brand registry and the IP, but this was contracted manufacturing. So our next production won’t be from the same place as the previous contract is over.
Our normal MO here is to do nothing and let the fraudsters die, but it’s been several months and they’ve cycled several accounts.
If you want to involve a 3rd party (attorney, law enforcement) for the stolen goods, your distributor probably needs to be involved since the fraud occurred with them. You were presumably paid for the goods so you’re not the one with the claim.