Scam Alert: Copycat websites mean that your designer purchase could be made in Mongolia

[babylonsister]

Watch That Watch

Copycat websites mean that your designer purchase could be made in Mongolia

by: Sid Kirchheimer | from: AARP Bulletin


Debbie Hughes was doing some very early online Christmas shopping when she typed “Tiffany & Company” into the search bar.

“Up came a website called Tiffany & Company On Sale and I thought, wow!” says the 57-year-old Ohioan. “They were selling a sterling silver necklace and bracelet for $228–what it usually costs for just the bracelet.”

But the website didn’t belong to the famous New York jeweler, despite looking quite a bit like the one that does. Its address—www.tiffanyco.mn—was a tweak of the real Tiffany website, www.tiffany.com, and the .mn meant it was registered as a Mongolian site.

And the discount designer jewelry that Hughes ordered? It did arrive—in a package with a Chinese postmark. “It was chrome-like junk,” she tells Scam Alert. But the gift box was a very clever copy of a Tiffany box.

It took Hughes, who operates a home-based business selling books and DVDs over the Internet, nearly four months to get a refund from her credit card company. The fake Tiffany company ignored her e-mails requesting a refund, and its website had no telephone number.

more...

http://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/info-05-2010/watch_that_watch.html?cmp=NLC-WBLTR-CTRL-60410-F1-1

[havocmom]

1. Reality alert: Lots of designers sell license to slap their names on junk anyway

The 'real deal' could also be made in sweat shops by near-slave labor.