Quick Question about an online vendor

Is it:  Ceorzo.shop?  While it looks legit, and nothing is reported when you search if it is legitimate, there are several overseas and California based sites that offer things at ridiculous prices, things like a Sangean radio that lists and sells for 250 on Amazon, but they have it for 125.  They don't have it, and as long as you pay with PayPal or a card with buyer protection, you will get your money back.  If sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Always keep P.T. Barnum's observation in mind.

Thank you very true about listening to pt Barnum I’m not sure how to check the legitimacy of an on-line business

I’ll have to keep poking on it thank you

also I did use PayPal so I should be able to get back whatever little I paid

I'm vary wary of any site that doesn't list an address anywhere and also doesn't have any phone number.  I personally wouldn't order anything from them.

There are a few mysterious online vendors that always seem to have what the well known trains stores have long sold out of.

A fancy legitimate looking website means nothing.

I've seen them use stock photos from Trainz and elsewhere.

Maybe I'm wrong but that website says a whole lot of nothing  on the "about us" section. They never charge sales tax which seems suspect too.

Caveat Emptor. With all of the reputable sponsors on this forum. Why buy from an unknown seller.

I'd consider calling your credit card and canceling  the charges if you placed an order.

Stay far away from such sites. A while back I found a couple such sites claiming to have Lionel Legacy 990 &  993 sets for $200.00 if i remember right.

After a lot of digging these sites were all bogus as I suspected.

Thanks guys,

I’m newly back to trains after a few years away from it,

I got excited about finding a car I was interested in and couldn’t find anywhere ,

I’d love it if you guys wouldn’t mind pointing out where I can find the mth vendors on here

thank you again

@Choo-Choo Johnny posted:

Thanks guys,

I’m newly back to trains after a few years away from it,

I got excited about finding a car I was interested in and couldn’t find anywhere ,

I’d love it if you guys wouldn’t mind pointing out where I can find the mth vendors on here

thank you again

You could go straight to the source, MTH Retailer Search.  Link Here

Also many of our Forum sponsors are MTH dealers.

Thank you I know about the mth site but it doesn’t help much with availability

@Choo-Choo Johnny posted:

Thank you I know about the mth site but it doesn’t help much with availability

Theres always the " wanted to buy" section here on the forum.

If a member doesn't have the item to sell. They may know of an "actual" store that does.

@Choo-Choo Johnny posted:

Thank you I know about the mth site but it doesn’t help much with availability

If you search for MTH vendors within your specified radius, in the results, if you click on the link for each vendor it will take you to their individual website where you can check availability either by looking on their own website or by calling their phone number.

I wish it were easier to find specific products with some who don't list everything they have in stock, but I think this may be too much to keep up with for some of them.  Good luck in your searches.

You guys are all awesome here

thank you so much

Pretty much anytime you see an obscure website with a diverse array of merchandise and images with no consistent theme, the operator uses a web scraper to hotlink to images on other websites with the objective of acquiring your payment information to sell on the dark web.  A small sample from the website mentioned trace back to a collection of images from eBay listings stored on a Fastly cloud server in Florida.  The website itself traces back to Cloudflare in Sweden, which although well-intended to offer website security in practice offers bad actors a shield so you can't see their actual ip addresses and locations. 

Advise avoiding .shop and .top websites offering everything under the sun for sale.

My favorite is Active Powersports AKA Escondido Powersports .  Why Google hasn't flagged them is beyond me, yet when you do a shopping search for hard to find items they come up almost every time.  They stock nothing and ship nothing.  Total scam yet they prevail.  Mind boggling.

John

@Craftech posted:

My favorite is Active Powersports AKA Escondido Powersports .  Why Google hasn't flagged them is beyond me, yet when you do a shopping search for hard to find items they come up almost every time.  They stock nothing and ship nothing.  Total scam yet they prevail.  Mind boggling.

John

That sounds like the "vendor" on a fraudulent charge that I had on a credit card a couple of years ago.  Fortunately, the CC company took care of it, but who knows where my info ended up. 

I recently had a conversation with a small (legitimate) online vendor - he told me that the credit card companies make the vendor eat fraudulent charges under $1000, which would be a huge hit to his business - it's a scary world out there.

Bottom line - if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  If an unknown vendor "has" a product that you can't find elsewhere, it's a huge red flag.