New Scam Artist Site Selling Philatelic Materials

I was browsing with Google the other afternoon, looking for some historical post office related items that I occasionally will find offered for sale outside of ebay.

To my suprise, one of the items I had been watching on ebay was listed "for sale" on a website based in China, and at the steep discount buy-it-now price of $30 for the same item listed on ebay for $95. The description of the item essentially showed a screen crop of the ebay item,(with the ebay price stuck out, and the new price inserted in red).

Since the ebay listing was from a respected US based postal history dealer with whom I regularly do business, I looked around this China based site and found another dozen or so items listed that I recognized, both from this dealer and several other known ebay dealers, all items now offered at steep discounts.

I contacted two of the dealers for whom I had direct e-mail addresses, and advised them of these "fake" listings. Neither was aware of the site or the listings.

The site in qestion was listed at "www.cultureshop.top. The domain extension ".top" is managed by a Chinese domain name registrar, and I found several reviews warning that many of these sites are scam artists.

At least one of these dealers contacted both the site, and the domain registrar, and alerted them that the items listed on the site did not belong to the people running the site, nor had they been authorized to list the items or accept payments for them. The domain registrar declined to take any action to remove the items or the site.

However, this morning (Aug 4, 2018), when I attempted to connect to this site in preparation for this post, I got the message "This site can't be reached", so it appears that the website is no longer active.

The original site gave no information as to where it was located, and it accepted only credit cards for payment - no PayPal option offered. I suspect that they way it operate is that the buyer goes through their check-out, pays, and then no item is shipped, as they do not actually own the item. Of course, the credit card number is now compromised, and buyer "watch-out" !!.

The danger in this sort of scam is that unless the buyer is able to recognize the item being offered as belonging to someone else and not the website where it was encountered, it is easy to simply jump on the bargain and purchase it.

So when dealing with an unfamiliar site, offering something you want to buy, take a few minutes and check it out carefully.

Mike

Great post. You have to be very cautious.

Most of those sites are not "scam artists." They are quite up front about what they are selling because it's perfectly legal in China.

i get "server ip address could not be found" even though I subsequently googled the name and clicked on a known link with site description.

Bobby, It's perfectly legal to sell items you don't own? I know that intellectual property laws are ignored by China, but in this case the site was selling goods that they did not possess nor would have any way to to deliver, and/or it was simply a mechanism to capture credit card or PayPal information.

It is literally the definition of a scam operation.

OP, next time, please save screenshots before the site disappears. It would add a lot to the discussion.

revenuecollector:

One of my reasons for checking back with the site today as I was preparing my post was to make screenshots. I was caught off guard by their rapid response to block the site or remove it.

Sorry, I didn't read well enough. I just thought it was another post about counterfeits.

Same thing for me but took the bait and made the purchase. Had to get Visa involved to get the refund.

Same story, took the bait and had to file with the credit card company. If you have seen it on ebay contact the vendor.