Hi all, I thought I saw something similar a while back, maybe on the NSFE, but I can’t find it back now.
I was doing a sweep of our product catalog to purge any rogue listings that are not ours, and found our entire catalog listed on ibspot.com… After checking the website reviews I feel pretty confident it’s just a complete scam website. I’ve dealt with dropship listings on Walmart before, not nothing with a complete website, any suggestions on how to tackle this?
If they are a scammy site, they won’t care about any warnings or threats you send them. It’s lawyers or bust.
yeah, the fact they’ve got our products listed at over double the price means it will probably never affect us, but I hate the idea of anyone getting scammed by sleazeballs…
It’s also bad for your brand if people are seeing your stuff on a sleazy site, or if they see it for massively more money.
I just had a problem with a buyer that wasn’t MY buyer —
I received a call and it went into my voice mail. I have a VERY good SPAM blocker so any unknown numbers either leave a message or are blocked.
Very nice lady asked WHY the packing slip/invoice said the book she ordered was $15.00 but eBay charged her $30 or some such numbers.
I looked all over for an eBay order and didn’t find one. Finally did a search for the book title and found an Amazon order!
I had to call her back and explain that someone on eBay was dropshipping the item using my inventory from Amazon to do it. It took a little back and forth explaining to get her to understand she got screwed by whoever she bought from.
I told her she needed to let eBay know this person was doing this. I SHOULD have told her to leave BAD BAD BAD feedback for the seller but it didn’t occur to me at the time.
Now, I have to figure out how I proceed on both Amazon to report the buyer, and on eBay, to report the seller there.
Sales are slowing to a trickle since the rush appears to be done so I might find the time to figure it out – right after I drive to Uline this afternoon to restock boxes!
They must just duplicate Amazon. My entire catalogue is on there for triple the price.
That’s hot stuff… Found one of our items on there. More than twice the price. Is what it is. Hope they sell lots of it…..
Already being sued.
https://dockets.justia.com/docket/pennsylvania/paedce/2:2025cv05135/643304
We should all get together and file a lawsuit for IP infringement for everyone here. At least let a lawyer make some money off of people stealing our IP.
They have some of our products on there. The description is straight from Amazon which includes instructions on how to personalize (which of coarse can’t be done on that site).
I take your point - you’ve mentioned before that from year to year any discrepancies seen in inventory accounting typically are eventually resolved to an acceptably-low threshold of error(s) - but it must be admitted that I take rather a dimmer view of such scrapers.
The original Amazon Catalog scrapers, who arose shortly after the dot-com bubble burst - the book aggregators - also originated the modus operandi of falsely claiming INR, NAD, and/or other ‘defects’ in order to take advantage of Amazon’s exuberantly-lenient return policies; MUCH chaos - not to mention wasted time on the part of impacted sellers in combating such miscreance - has ever since not merely ensued, but metastasized.
For our own part, we typically tend to unleash the legal beagles on all infringements of any of our IPR - including, but not limited to, violations of our Supply Chain Provenance(s).
Just about all the Handmade jewelry sellers in SAS. Mine are over double the price.
111 items out of my 1500+ catalog, averaging 2.5x my price. How do people find these scammers? and why buy from them without checking to see where else the products are offered?
I figured it was more widespread than just us, seems like a pretty good chunk of the entire Amazon catalog. I don’t know if it would do any actual good to fight this kind of stuff, the biggest issue I have is that just a google search for 4th gen***(brand name)*** metal tractor seat popped up nothing but this website in the sponsored products section. And with the recent anti-amazon sentiment I could see people actually buying from here considering it’s the 1st thing people would see… And as @Dogtamer mentioned, we did experience a fair amount of the dropshipper claiming INR or submitting returns and shipping stickers back, so it is still somewhat concerning.
I also found another website yesterday a little further down the google search for our stuff, don’t remember the name right now, but they had a couple of our seats listed at roughly 1/2 price… Guaranteed they’re not reselling our stuff legitimately LOL
I found 2 of mine so far.
I am sure people have found the Russian site scraping sites, but they are not ostensibly targeting US buyers.
ibspot is located in the US and in its about the site information makes it clear that it is targeting US buyers and claiming the products are sourced by its “partners”
If we had a functioning FTC they would be shut down for misrepresentation.
I suspect that they deliver as many items as would have been delivered if the items were ordered from their Amazon sellers. It is the implication that the suppliers are willing participants in these transactions which is criminal.
It is fraud in my book, not a legal expert, but it sure seems fraudulent especially with the egregious price gouging.
Price gouging is not illegal.
Nor is selling merchandise you can deliver but do not own. You are not breaching any contract.
What can be illegal is misleading the customer, and clever lawyers attempt to obfuscate in a manner to minimize the legal risk.
One could always place an order with those other “sites” that purchase our inventory on Amazon. Then raise the price on Amazon so that the cost is much more than what the other party is selling the product for.. Wash, rinse, and repeat.
Takes some time and patience but it can drive some of the amateur drop shippers away.
Nah. My Amazon listings will just get shut down by the high price bot.