Fake Shops and the Customers They Fool

A store that looks like yours

A customer forwards a screenshot of an advertisement: your best-selling product, photographed exactly as you photographed it, at a fraction of your price, on a website you have never seen.

The site looks polished. It has a padlock in the address bar, a countdown timer, a banner announcing a closing-down sale, and a row of five-star reviews.

People who buy pay by card and receive nothing, or, weeks later, a cheap imitation posted from overseas.

Some of them then write to you, because it was your product they thought they were buying. Fake shops work all year, and the gift season gives them the most people to fool.

How the fake shops work

• Real photographs, copied from small brands' own sites and social accounts.
• Impossible prices, usually explained by a closing-down or anniversary sale.
• New domains, registered weeks ago and abandoned weeks later.
• Paid social media ads, shown to people interested in similar products.
• Invented reviews and trust badges copied from elsewhere.
• No real contact details: a form and a free email address.

The first is the one that drags a genuine business in. A fake shop does not need your name; it needs your pictures, because real photographs of a distinctive product are what make an impossible price believable.

Why the padlock proves nothing

Customers have been told for years to look for the padlock before paying. Fake shops have one too.

Certificates are now free and issued automatically, and the padlock only means the connection is encrypted. It says nothing about whether the business at the other end is honest.

The signs that matter are the ones a fake cannot produce cheaply: a history, a place and people.

What it costs a genuine shop

Confused emails asking where an order is. Angry messages from people who think you took their money. A one-star review on your listing for something you never sold.

And a quieter cost: a shopper who has seen your product at a fraction of the price may decide your real price is the unreasonable one.

Looking obviously genuine

Show where the business is: an address, a phone number answered by a person, and how long you have been making or selling what you sell.

Show the people and the place. A photograph of your workshop or counter, with your sign in it, ties the products to a real business in a way a copied product shot cannot.

Make the policies specific: where orders ship from, how long they take, and how returns work. And where it helps, explain your price, since a line on materials and making shows why a fake's price is impossible.

Saying where you really sell

Add a page listing every place your products are genuinely sold: your own site, your premises, and each shop that stocks you, by name and town.

Link to it from the footer and from your social profiles, so a customer who doubts a price has somewhere definite to check.

If you never run closing-down sales, say so plainly. It turns the fake's main selling line into a warning sign.

A worked example

A three-person company on the Sunshine Coast designs and prints linen bedding and table linen, and sells it through its own online store and a handful of home stores.

Last November, customers began forwarding social media ads for its best-selling duvet cover at a fraction of the real price, on a site with a different name, a countdown timer and a closing-down banner.

Every product photograph was the company's own, including a shot of a bed made up in the owner's spare room. Within weeks, several people had emailed asking where their order was.

The company saved dated screenshots, reported each ad to the platform running it, and sent the fake shop's host a copyright complaint listing every copied photograph.

Each customer who wrote got a sympathetic reply and the advice to call their card issuer.

This year its site has a page naming every shop that stocks its linen, a line saying it never runs closing-down sales, and photographs of the print studio and the three people in it.

When a fake uses your photographs

Save the evidence first: screenshots showing the address and the date, and the ad itself. Fake shops disappear quickly, and a report without evidence is easy to dismiss.

Report the ad to the platform that ran it. Then find the site's host, which a web company can usually identify even when the domain's owner is hidden.

Send the host an abuse report and a copyright complaint; many hosts follow the American takedown process known as a DMCA notice. Google has a similar request form for removing copied pages from its results.

If the checkout names a payment service, report the shop there as well. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre also collects reports, which helps when one operator runs many shops.

The customers who were fooled

The people who write to you are victims, and some will be angry with you before they understand. Reply kindly and quickly.

Explain that the shop is not yours, and suggest they contact their card issuer straight away to dispute the charge. If one leaves a review on your listing by mistake, reply calmly in public and ask Google to remove it.

Finding copies first

Google's search by image shows pages using a photograph you upload. Running your four or five best product photographs through it once a month often finds a copy before a customer does.

Watermarks help less than people hope. They are easily cropped out, and a large one spoils the photograph for your real customers.

The counter-case

Most small businesses will never be copied. Fakes favour products that photograph well and sell to a wide audience online, such as clothing, bags, home goods and gifts. A plumber's risk is a fake listing, not a fake shop.

Takedowns are slow and incomplete, too. A shop removed this week can reappear under a new name next month.

The aim is not to stop every copy. It is to be easy to verify, and to act quickly when a copy appears.

This month

1. Add a page listing where you really sell.
2. Show your address, phone and people.
3. Photograph your workshop as well as products.
4. Search your best photographs by image monthly.
5. Save evidence before reporting anything.
6. Report the ad, the host and the search result.
7. Answer fooled customers kindly and quickly.

Step one is the one that works before any fake appears. A page naming every genuine seller gives a doubtful customer somewhere to check, and makes any other seller obviously suspect.

Criminals who go after a genuine store's own checkout instead are the subject of card skimming code on a checkout page.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.