A large number of cross-border sellers’ products were “moved”, resulting in heavy losses!

Cross-border e-commerce is full of intrigue!

Is cross-border e-commerce a profitable business? Different people have different opinions, but those in the industry should agree with this statement: cross-border e-commerce is a business full of dangers! Because of the endless stream of spoofs from peers, sellers can suffer heavy losses if they are not careful. It can be said that almost every cross-border seller has encountered unfair competition.

A large number of cross-border sellers’ products were “moved”, resulting in heavy losses!

Previously, Yien had reported on the malicious competition behavior of "peers using independent websites to complain about Amazon sellers' product infringement". In detail, some unscrupulous sellers used Shopify to build a website, and then collected and listed competitors' Amazon links, and then went to the Amazon platform to complain about competitors' infringement, and almost every time they did, they were successful.

In fact, there are many similar malicious competition behaviors in the cross-border circle. In recent years, unscrupulous sellers have been "moving" the products of Amazon peers to other platforms such as Meikeduo, and then filing infringement complaints. Compared with using independent stations to spoof, this method can be said to be "changing the soup but not the medicine."

Amazon seller Xiao Zhang was the victim. According to Xiao Zhang, someone copied and pasted the link of his Amazon store to a Meikeduo store, and then the person started to file a copyright complaint with Amazon. Currently, nearly 10 products of Xiao Zhang's Amazon store have been removed due to the complaint . Since the other party's complaints were continuous, Xiao Zhang had to spend a lot of time to solve the problem, and was finally forced to pay the other party privately to settle the matter.

Amazon seller Xiao Li also said that Amazon products were collectively complained about by a Meikeduo store, and have been reported three times so far . Xiao Li observed that the Meikeduo store was almost full of Amazon hot-selling products. "The other party copied and pasted a lot of Amazon links , most of which were best-selling products, with the purpose of selling the preemptively registered domain name . "

In addition to Meikeduo, cross-border e-commerce platforms such as eBay, Walmart, and Temu are also exploited by bad sellers.

Sellers who were affected suffered varying degrees of losses. Not only were their products taken down due to complaints, but they also faced the risk of being "dead". Seller Xiao Liu said that one of his Amazon stores was no longer in operation, but the other party was still complaining that the products in this store were involved in copyright infringement, which resulted in another store being registered due to related reasons.

Judging from the feedback, the real addresses of these bad sellers are extremely difficult to find. After reporting the relevant issues to the platform, sellers are not always able to successfully file complaints. "The other party copied my copy and pictures verbatim, but the platform ruled that the complaint was invalid. " A seller who was deceived said helplessly.

Domain name and trademark registration extortion cases are frequent! Sellers continue to fall victim to scams

"Removing" sellers' product links and pictures is just a means for unscrupulous sellers to make fun of them. In the past two years, trademark registration and blackmail incidents have become more and more frequent.

Someone in China preemptively registered a U.S. trademark, and then filed it with the customs.

Someone has snatched the brand name as a domain name and sent a blackmail letter to the site .

The British trademark was registered by someone else, and the starting price was 100,000 yuan.

Only the EU trademark was registered, but the German trademark was registered instead.

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Regarding the news about trademark squatting, Yien.com also reported this matter in detail some time ago. Many sellers often overlook a loophole: for example, they originally only sold products on the US site and registered trademarks on the US site. Later, after expanding their products to Europe and other places, they forgot to continue to register trademarks; or they only registered 28 categories of trademarks, and then sold 16 categories of products, and then someone with ulterior motives squatted on the 16 categories of trademarks... As a result, the product was complained of infringement, and the other party, under the guise of complaint, actually wanted to force the seller to buy the trademark for a large sum of money!

In fact, domain name preemptive registration is not uncommon.

"Your company is suspected of domain name infringement. Please note that if you do not respond to the infringement notice or take measures to resolve it within three days, we will file a relevant infringement complaint..." Recently, Amazon seller Xiao Li received a domain name extortion letter and learned that the brand domain name had been registered by someone else . After subsequent communication, the other party claimed that if he wanted to buy the domain name back, it would cost more than 20,000 yuan, otherwise he would keep reporting the store until it was blocked.

It is understood that many cross-border sellers who encounter similar problems think that the other party is just sending mass extortion messages, and if they reply, the other party will continue to pursue them, so they choose to ignore it directly, and many people escaped the disaster. However, some sellers have not been able to avoid the "bad luck". Their store products have been reported for infringement one after another. The sellers who were affected reported the other party's extortion behavior to Alibaba Cloud. The customer service said that even if they knew that this was a preemptive registration, they could not cancel the domain name that had been preempted, and they could only negotiate with the seller to negotiate the price.

Buying domain names has become a forced choice for sellers. In fact, some sellers choose to take the initiative to fight back by "complaining to the relevant domain name registration website that the other party is illegally extorting" and blocking the other party's independent website. Many sellers have successfully fought back.

Of course, the way to completely prevent domain name extortion from happening is to register the domain name in advance, and register the domain name globally at the same time as registering the brand, so as to be prepared.

Cross-border e-commerce spoofs are prevalent, sellers need to be vigilant

Cross-border e-commerce spoofs are rife, and domain name and trademark registration extortion is just the tip of the iceberg. Malicious negative reviews, adding banned words to product descriptions, and other behaviors are emerging in an endless stream. There is even an upgraded version of malicious negative reviews: after an order is placed , the bad seller first gives a 4-star positive review and adds a product picture, and then changes the rating star, turning a 4-star positive review into a 1-star negative review. After several such operations, the seller's product is "seriously damaged", and the ranking that has been hard to climb may drop rapidly.

There are also many unscrupulous sellers who "get something for nothing". These people take advantage of the refund-only policy of platforms such as Amazon, and apply for a refund without returning the products after purchasing them. In this way, they can get various products for free, and then resell the free products on major platforms such as Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and independent websites. It is not enough that the products are free, even the product pictures and descriptions are copied, which can be said to be "freeloading" to the end. A seller in Hangzhou was fooled by this, and it is roughly estimated that the loss is as high as tens of millions.

"The vicious competition of cross-border sellers is simply destructive! Some people make fun of their peers every day , but in the end they may not benefit from it. Instead, they end up with a lose-lose situation. It is actually more important to spend the energy of making fun of their peers on optimizing products and practicing basic skills. " A seller said that the profit-seeking nature of cross-border e-commerce makes this industry inseparable from "intrigues", and those involved will inevitably be implicated. Only by paying attention to everything can the losses be minimized.

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