Fraudulent Retail Websites

@verdantaudio @cleeds

Thanks for sharing and as the actual OEM it sure makes sense you’d know your own distribution, costs and dealer network. Further having a customer get scammed, the sites copying other sites etc all adds up to fraudulent activities. @cleeds not sure why you’re so adamantly questioning Verdantaudio when he/they are the actual OEM? Tracking grey market activity is pretty easy actually- we did it 20 years ago when we were a large dealer group in NYC/NJ (Harvey Electronics). It’s easy enough to track serial numbers- if you sell s/n 1234 to an authorized dealer "A" and then find s/n 1234 for sale or actually purchased from a non authorized (Grey market dealer "B"), then "A" sold it out the back door to "B". If "B" is advertising the product but never delivers (because it’s a bait / switch item) then its still highly sketchy.

Thanks for this.

I’d brought this up in a post a few weeks ago.  I looked into the company’s bona fides by using “Whois.com” and also looking at the address - mapping the actual location of the “company.”

In both cases ownership of the website/URL was relatively new (within a year), the site hosted by Godaddy (who I’ve used for about 15 years) linked to  overseas owners traced to Singapore and Hong Kong while the actual “warehouse” turned out to be a small suburban home. Not very likely a legitimate operation.

While possible that someone is reselling returned or overstock or “going out of business/large lots items” a pair of vacuum tubes normally selling for upwards of $400 offerred for $77 is, at a minimum, odd.

No, I didn’t buy, just posted the info as a warning to others.

Like audio advisor?

I have ordered from Audio Advisor, never had any problems with them?

Thanks OP ... total fraud!!

@fuzztone plus one ....