A group of sellers suffered again, with their profits a hundred times higher being maliciously extorted!

There are all kinds of birds in the forest. In the past, there were "rogue law firms" that maliciously scammed people, and in the future, there were "rogue merchants" that maliciously blackmailed people. Nowadays, on Amazon, there are many bad means such as malicious domain name registration and then blackmail, and a large number of sellers have suffered greatly.

Many sellers were blackmailed for hundreds of times the profit due to domain names

Recently, sellers have been reporting that they have received threatening emails.

The content of the emails is mostly "We have registered the international domain name corresponding to **, the website is ***.com. Please be sure to purchase the domain name through the corresponding platform within the required time. Otherwise, the following products will be listed on the independent website, and a counterfeit sales and copyright complaint will be filed with Amazon. At that time, Amazon may remove and delete the following listings."

Many sellers who have registered trademarks should know that normal sellers only register trademarks and do not register domain names. However, it is precisely this point that allows some "rogue merchants" to take advantage of the situation. They register some brands as domain names and then blackmail the sellers. For example, if the seller's domain name is 123, they will register the domain name 123.com and then ask the seller to redeem it at a high price, making ill-gotten gains.

Moreover, they force sellers to buy these domain names at a high cost, with domain names listed at a price of more than 7,000 yuan, and as high as more than 60,000 yuan, and even hundreds of thousands of yuan, depending on the sales volume and quantity of the product. However, according to the normal market price, the price of an ordinary domain name is only tens or hundreds of yuan, and the amount they demand is equivalent to extorting 100 times the profit of the seller, but some sellers, considering various factors, have no choice but to pay the money even if they are very angry.

Regarding the domain name squatting, some people point the finger at the sellers in the same industry, believing that some malicious peers are trying to steal the trademark; some people point the finger at the service providers, believing that the service providers obtained relevant data and registered first. However, since the domain name squatting market has existed for a long time and is not illegal, many sellers are helpless against it.

The operation methods of these "rogue merchants" are basically the same. If the seller can accept the price, they will pay for it. If not, they will put the product on the shelves according to the instructions in the email and complain to Amazon. Later, the seller's product will be removed from the shelves. If the seller wants them to withdraw the lawsuit, they will also have to pay a fee.

Sellers gnashed their teeth at the rogue sellers' behavior, but some chose to pay to avoid trouble, while others thought it was just a phishing email and ignored it. In their opinion, if they ignored the other party, they would think there was no hope and it would just pass. However, some of the sellers' subsequent links did not have any problems, but some links did cause certain losses.

"Their operation is exactly the same as before, posting your product pictures on the independent website, except that now they use the brand domain name website to blackmail," an old seller admitted. Their operation is very feasible, and ordinary sellers do not accept it. After their set of procedures, the possibility of the seller's brand link being removed from the shelves is as high as 100%.

At present, there are many sellers who have the same experience, and a group of sellers have posted on social networking sites for help. Some have received emails and are struggling whether to spend money to reclaim the brand domain name; some have just applied for a trademark and found that someone else has registered the ".com" domain name, and they are in a state of panic; some product listings have been removed from the shelves due to complaints; and some have received threatening emails and are ready to fight back, seeking to know what to do if the links from peers are removed from the shelves.

So, how should sellers deal with the operations of these rogue merchants? Some sellers suggest not to rush to pay for the purchase, but to open a case and submit evidence as soon as possible , because the seller's link on Amazon was created earlier and can be submitted to Amazon as evidence; secondly, find out the company and individual to which the domain name belongs, and report to the police to solve the problem; finally, check the domain names of all the company's brands, and register those that should be registered in advance to avoid losses again. As the saying goes, it is better to prevent a disaster than to mend the fold after it has been lost . In the future, sellers should consider registering a domain name before registering a trademark, otherwise they should change the brand name to fundamentally eliminate the possibility of this happening .

In this cross-border circle full of dangers, there are endless spoofs among peers, not only malicious domain name registration, but also many other ...

There are endless spoofs. One seller's 8,000+ stocks turned into defective products overnight.

A seller revealed that his products were spoofed one after another. Initially, he was complained of trademark infringement and patent infringement, and later his products were added as adult products. The seller had just solved the previous problems when he was spoofed again. He had to wonder whether one of his American colleagues was specifically making fun of him.

This time, 8,400 inventory products became defective overnight, with no account status or performance notification. "According to common sense, this product should not be defective, because the return rate of another product is 1.3%, and the dissatisfaction rate of this product is only 0.61%," the seller said helplessly.

The seller tried to open a case, but the customer service said there was no entry to submit the case, and the only way was to remove the order. Sellers who had the same experience expressed their sympathy: "Each entry and exit increases the cost by $2." However, the seller thought that it would be better to throw it away than to remove it, and it is estimated that the final outcome will be that Amazon will take it offline and sell it.

Another new type of spoof is to open malicious cases in the seller's backend, including swearing, extorting protection fees, and requesting the closure of the store. According to the seller, the spoof party successfully opened multiple cases in the seller's store for several consecutive days , demanding that the seller pay a licensing fee of 100,000 yuan , otherwise they would report to Amazon that the seller was selling products that infringed their intellectual property rights.

I asked several colleagues and they all had the same experience, the same case, and the same patent complaint. "The other party only needs to know our email address to open a case to our store. I contacted customer service many times and opened many cases to no avail. They all thought that our account was stolen by phishing," the seller said frankly. Even if we changed the password of the store and email address, the other party could still open a case to our store and send blackmail and threatening letters.

Today’s cross-border trading is full of dangers. Sellers must not only abide by the rules of the platform and operate in compliance, but also guard against possible external risks, such as pranks among peers and hacking of accounts by friends. As the peak season approaches, Amazon’s measures to crack down on sellers will certainly intensify, so sellers should be careful.

Brand Domain

Malicious blackmail

Seller