Fake Shops

This is interesting. Just last week I was looking for a Rainbow Country 40's Car Coat which is apparently no longer made and is sold out everywhere in my size. Found a "Japanese" site that had it listed for sale at half price. Biggest red flag was that they had it in all sizes and all were available. They also had photos of it lifted from other sites. The site is same as described here by others, all kinds of different products from all kinds of other brands with everything at a big discount. Almost pulled the trigger on it too, but I just knew it had to be bogus and wouldn't result in me getting the jacket so I didn't

Cyber Lip said:

This is interesting. Just last week I was looking for a Rainbow Country 40's Car Coat which is apparently no longer made and is sold out everywhere in my size. Found a "Japanese" site that had it listed for sale at half price. Biggest red flag was that they had it in all sizes and all were available. They also had photos of it lifted from other sites. The site is same as described here by others, all kinds of different products from all kinds of other brands with everything at a big discount. Almost pulled the trigger on it too, but I just knew it had to be bogus and wouldn't result in me getting the jacket so I didn't

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Some are very cunning and will show others goods at realistic prices alongside their bargain ‘fish’.....

Thanks alot folks!
what we do here right now is very valuable!
We place a warning which may be of a huge help for all of our fellow loungers who are not so social-media-savy. Since there are more and more products of our typical "prey-scheme" like Eastman Jackets and others showing up in scam shops nowadays even through a normal google search, some of us only recently start to stumble upon their offers and may be fooled like I was yesterday.
I remember well how I was researching for example Deck Jackets five years ago and again only one year ago on google and had no fake offer like this showing up. Even less so in the years before. So in my typical hunting grounds these animals were simply not present until recently.

Cyber Lip said:

Biggest red flag was that they had it in all sizes and all were available.

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Same with the Bronson. I know that Bronson and my trusted vendor Lee of vtgdr_store (this is an example of a real guy and a real shop with a very good service, operating directly from China) only have very limited size choices at the moment. But this f*cking scam store "had" all colours in all sizes. I was hunting for an olive one in size 44 because I want another one in a bit of "oversize" for my bushwhacking. And they were sold out everywhere. This "store" out of a sudden "had" it. AND DEAD CHEAP! I am convinced we have inheritaged dedicated genes from our hunting fishing and gathering forebears which even today still activate a very basic program in the oldest parts of our brains that reduces our abilities to over-think when we are surprised by an exeptional hunting chance to help us to just react and attack in a kind of an animal instinct. I was in this prehistoric attack-mode, obviously. These shops benefit from this instinctive and spontanous buying reflex. So I am to blame, too. Because my brain should have the sections that make me halt and doubt.

bn1966 said:

I let Eastmans know that their site photos were being used

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I did write Lee from vtgdr_store (Bronson itself I guess) and told him about the use of his photos and size chart and he confirmed that they have huge problems with these scam shops, but have a hard time to find legal ways to knock them down as he called it. But he is optimistic that they all get cought in the end and punished. In our western world we have been educated to not trust Chinese business people but here we can see, there is good and bad in any country or culture around the globe.

It is so important to share experiences with the good ones and with the bad ones. But it is so much easier to share good experiences than it is to talk about when one was fooled. No one is to blame because he or she was fooled. The one who fooled is the one we shall put the finger on.

We can't keep this thread bumped up for all times. But maybe we can ask the Bartenders to place parts of it into the "important" headlines. Just a thought.

Forgot to mention: the scam shop that fooled me has a website starting with https://. So not all of them use http:// which often is said to be one of the typical signs for a scam store. The diagnostics become more difficult.

I try to stick to known market places when it comes to buying online, if talking about chinese products then aliexpress, taobao, and such. I dont buy from websites unless it is the official website of the brand. Discount always push me away unless it has a valid reason like new member discount, discount from points earned with previous purchases, following their social media discount code, or discount for out of season items. Just straight up random discount for most items or shop saying they sell everything in stock half price to close business or something like that is always scare me off, especially if what they sell is just stuff you can easily find elsewhere at market places.

navetsea said:

especially if what they sell is just stuff you can easily find elsewhere at market places.

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Yeah, but when you find "niche" products you specifically searched google for and some show up, you often don't immediately think about fraud. You simply don't see how this would pay out for them instead of offering any widely known product (like popular fashion brands or designer brands like Dolce & Gabbana and such). But I guess there is some new software "on board" their fake sites which directly interacts with google searches and is able to kind of "personalize" your search results to even the most special items of interest. I think this can work with an illegally harvested list of cookies. Say, I search google for "Chris' special MoonJacket" (a fantasy niche product), the google algorythm is tapped, their software creates a layover with copies from real sites as shown by google which have "Chris's special MoonJacket" and offers you a shop that shows up in your search results and it appeals to you, you click on it and a trustful looking web store shows up with an offer you can't pass up. This is only a guess because I am thrilled how perfect their offer was interblended with real shop search results. It is like throwing out a huge net and see what we can catch.

This is where I can make out a possible responsibility on google's side to get rid of fake shops showing up in search results.

Niche segment scam is a newer format I guess, since nische item generates more profit in each scam, but on the otherhand like what you or nische community member does, once a member is scammed he will make a warning thread throughout the entire community. So probably these scammers would quickly jump boats from one niche to the next, workwear niche to collectible toys to sneakerhead, hype streetwear etc maybe.

I suppose you are right about that...

FB algorithm ensures that advertisements that may appeal to you appear in your threads. There is info on there from FB as to how this works. Could be a good thing for us and vendors if it was properly policed, sadly from a quick trawl yesterday at least half of the products that appeared as I scrolled on FB looked like scams..some obvious some much less so but probably were.

On FB the scam top items change about weekly, last week high end leather flight jackets, this week it’s radio controlled high end vehicles and Belstaff leather motorcycle jackets. Was parkas, Raybans and Loakes shoes recently too...

bn1966 said:

FB is full of this crap at the moment, I’ve seen BK and Eastmans jackets for sale from some made up company for $50 & BK M-51 parkas the same. I let Eastmans know that their site photos were being used and I’ve left ‘spoilers’ on these advertisements comments section pointing out they are scammers. Had only reply from one of these ‘companies’ saying that they are selling so cheaply because other vendors are so greedy, even ‘liked’ my post saying they were frauds

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Ebay is full of them too. There's a company on there at the minute claiming to sell Aero Aeromarine jackets for £60, using photos they've stolen from Aero's website. Even worse than the idiots who waste everyone's time with cheap, unbranded jackets listed as "Aero Highwayman style" or "X leather jacket not Aero not Eastman not Lewis not Schott". I always make a point of reporting these things, but TBH I highly doubt ebay does anything about it. I wish somebody would start up a serious alternative. I use Etsy a lot now, but while it's great for some things, it's not ideal for selling second hand stuff, and the search facility is very poor.

It's always the same, the greed or the hope of getting a bargain is the petrol in the engine for such providers ...

Wasn't it this some scholars dreamt of, convincing communist countries of the benefits of capitalism?

I have a chocolate cup. It was produced in China for the european market back in 1750. It was part of the cargo of porcelain, tea, gold, shipped on board the VOC ship Geldermalsen 1751 with destination Zeeland, Netherlands, where the ship never arrived. It struck a reef in the south chinese sea and sunk in a short time, hundreds of souls lost their lives, only a few made it in an adventurous journey back home to Europe. The wreck was discovered in 1984 by treasure hunter Michael Hatcher. In 1986 the porcelain was sold through an auction at Christie's in Amsterdam. The porcelain had eventually made it to it's destination - a 235 years delay that would drive any parcel tracking fanatic into the madhouse. The "excavation" of the wreck is highly disputed until today. Formally it belongs to China. The cargo was already payed for by the VOC in 1751 and the ship was in the possession of the Netherlands, but the wreck is situated in chinese waters and is now legal property of China..
Now.. The days the cup was made in Kanton, China, marked the peak of the greed of aristocratic Europeans for luxory items. Only 38 years later we had the French Revolution.

Now I drink my sunday chocolate from it. It has a little touch of decadence. At least the chocolate is fair trade and organic. Ok. Thinking about my mistake to buy from a chinese scam vendor, I have to admit, that "we" have been the raptors for centuries. I payed now for the steeling of the cup. So be peace.

BTW: Among the cargo Hatcher found inside the wreck of the Geldermalsen were gold bars with a chinese inscription which translates "Good Luck!"

58panheadfan said:

providers

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That's putting lipstick on a pig

Another story:
French watches, especially from Paris, were among the finest from the 1770s until about the early 1800s. But the Revolution of 1789 had it's impact. The english makers were competing them in the fight for the american market. The british americans prefered english watches out of political reasons.

I have a pocket watch. It was made in 1815 in Coventry, England for the american market. It is a good watch with a good movement but the "maker's name" engraved on the top plate is a fake. The Maker's name was faked to cheat the american customers that their watch was made by one of the reputable makers of England. In fact the movement was made from hundreds of parts hand made by hundred specialized craftsmen, -women and -children (they did the fine engravings because they had the eyes to do this) in cottage workshops. This system was highly effective and profitable. And it was the only way to keep up to the even more effective competitors in French-Switzerland who already used an industrial style production system with standardized parts. But the customers still wanted to see a reputable maker's name on it, a romantic vision of a small workshop lead by one genius maker. But soon, the cheap swiss factory made watches (which were even better, too) flooded the englisch market, the US soon to follow. In the beginning the swiss factories even engraved "London" on the movements! "Swiss" finally became a standard for quality. The modern swiss production ways were a result of revolutionary "ideas" in the aftermath of 1789 (it was this industrial large scale watch production that was THE model that much later Ford introduced to the USA for his automobile production).

I have a "Sheffield Knife" produced in Solingen, Germany to cheat the english market. Sheffield was a name of reputation. These knives soon had to be marked as "made in Germany" to give the buyers a hint that these were cheap imports. Soon the german knives were extremely popular because their quality was outstanding while the quality of the original Sheffield knives declined. This was the start of "Made in Germany" as a mark of quality soon famous all over the world.

I could continue with a guitar which was made in Japan back in the early 1970s...

History is repeating. At least all these examples are high quality items.

BTW. In 1815, the year my watch was made, Napoleon Bonaparte made it back to France from Elba, his first exile, re-conquered France, immediately started the wars anew, lost his final big scale battle at Waterloo, Belgium, finally surrendered to England, which put him on board of HMS Bellerophon to Plymouth, where he was hoping to be send off to a new exile in the USA (where he could have bought my watch), but instead found himself to become embarked on the HMS Northumberland with destination St. Helena, one of the worlds most isolate and remote places, were he was exiled until his death in 1821. (Napoleon owned several watches mady by Abraham Louis Breguet, who was swiss by the way, had his workshop in Paris for a long time, but his later factory in Switzerland.)

Back to topic, I hope we can continue this thread to future report fraudulent behaviour in the world wide web concerning the items of desire which are so typical for this forum like hq fedora hats, hq leather jackets, rare military jackets, higher end repros, suits, and so on. We can gather informations about how scammers act, about their typical methods, and also which ways there are to protect us from being ripped off and what we can do to get our money back in the best case. And we can talk about our experiences with fraud and scamming or faked items and also the experiences we make with how companies like ebay, PayPal, CC Providers, and so on respond to our problems.

Cats

NASA space rocket replicas were another popular item which might appeal to some here. Got messaged this evening by someone that purchased one on FB & received a small, cheap cardboard kids rocket kit instead of the glorious item in the ad.

crown of thorns and the true cross, might be the start of all thing hyped and easy scams.

I bought "Monster Ghost" from an ad in a comic book as a kid in the 70's. Anyone remember that ad? It advertised a ghost that could float, fly, and dance which you controlled via remote control. What it turned out to be was a small white plastic sheet with a hole in it, a casper the friendly ghost balloon, and a piece of fishing string. You inserted the balloon through the hole so Casper's head was coming out the top, and taped the piece of fishing wire (the "remote control") to the top of the head

Oh man.... "a real terror"