Sellers of all sizes deal with rivals copying their products and listings, but on Friday, a large merchant discovered someone had begun selling goods using his well-established store brand. Remarkably, credit card companies were processing payments on behalf of the copycat operator from buyers who then reached out to the real brand when they never received their orders.
We wrote about the case on Friday in, “Armed with a Hyphen, Pirate Hijacks Merchant’s Store Brand.” The copycat website used the merchant’s domain with one change (adding a hypen) and his logo.
After the merchant, a longtime reader of EcommerceBytes, contacted us on Friday afternoon, we reached out to Signifyd, which provides services to help retailers reduce the risks of fraud and consumer abuse.
Despite it being the Thanksgiving weekend, Michael Pezely, Signifyd Director of Risk Intelligence, got back to us on Saturday morning.
“Although the creation of copycat sites isn’t a direct monetary issue for a merchant, it does have the potential to cause severe reputational damage to the brand,” Pezely said. “And it is extremely frustrating from a merchant’s perspective.”
In the case of the reader who reached out to us yesterday, that was clear. He was getting calls from “non-customers” looking for help – and as we noted in yesterday’s post, he will likely incur legal fees since he reached out to his attorney for help.
Signifyd’s Pezely offered the…
