This used to happen for Coach bags previously. Coach went after these fake sites in a big way!! International laws regarding fraud need to be harsher. They are outdated!
I love COACH...I owned two, but not for "little Money" as shown! They give a little "Discount" sometimes - but only maybe 20 % ...and that was the Choice I have had and they are real, good Quality and I love them. But I payed several hundreds...not under 100 or 200 € 🫣😏!
If it is an expensive bag, selling for a fraction of the cost, do not fall for the scam. Save for the real thing. Do not lose your money. Thank you Tanner Leatherstein for your efforts and exposing these scams.
True, though I think living with hyperinflation makes it harder for people to recognize a fair price on foreign goods. Personally, I feel I’ve lost my sense what I can buy with TL, especially if it’s imported.
Yesss ..indeed! But: everybody should check that it is NOT POSSIBLE to buy a high Quality Bag as one from POLENE or any other is possible to get for under 100 € ! Also not for € 200 .... 😢! That is stupid to believe that this could be a correct Company...that MUST be a SCAM ‼️ THANK YOU A LOT DEAR TANNER L. ❣️🤗
here's the thing though. lots of western brands do sell to Turkey and it's legit, and because the currency has gone down so much the prices are much less, but not like 10x less. Ecco is one. they sell a shoe for $200 in the US and they sell the same shoe for Turkey for like half that cost. and it's the real deal. it's not a scam.
a little Turkish in me :) always starts to take a look at "what other ways are possible here (when the legal way comes to a dead end)" Of course not to pursue them always :)
It isn't that Shopify doesn't care about them. They care A LOT. Because they make a ton of money from them. They have every incentive to make sure they stay open.
wow I thought this is click bait--"they should be JAILED for this... because their product is so good!" lol. Turns out they're really scams! Hopefully someone with more resources can take this on... Great investigation and love how you show it to us step-by-step!
My girlfriend gets many ads on Instagram of many famous brands with 100% fake websites. She almost fell for it because of the 70% site wide sale. This is very common and nothing new
You’re one of the very few remaining people that are honest and have values. Thank you for your awesome videos!!! Always thoroughly entertained/leathertained!
This is amazing and I'm so impressed how you figured this out!! No doubt this was extremely time consuming and your investigation skills are top shelf. Thank you so much for this excellent video.... :)
Hi, thanks for your video, your patience and resilence. I just want to say that, it is possible that the scammers are not Turkish. I live in South Africa and I have noticed that we have a simialr scams happening but instead, the brands targeted are expensive athleisure (eg. North Face). Its strange because sometimes the brand already has it's own local website already, but a fake one pops up too as well. The fake website claims to be an 'outlet' with significantly cheaper prices. Our legal system basically doesn't recognise cybercrimes. When I noticed this trend with various brands, I was helpless. Next time I come across one of them, I will be sure to report them to the brands, espcially for the smaller Aussie & Kiwi brands. Nevertheless, I don't think this is a local scam, because the targeted brands are international brands, that your average South African may have heard of but would have no interest in. Instead, I think they are targeting digital nomads who come to SA for the summer (Nov - Apr) and want to buy brands that they are use to from US or EU. If you are a saffa reading this and know how police departments that could help, please let me know. Thanks again Tanner
You did a great service here and your effort showed that we’re not in this alone. We can all be in this together by spreading the word that we learned on your channel and being more aware as consumers because ultimately the more people who figure out the scams and the less people who buy /that’s what’s going to take these scammers out of business
Thank you for making the video. These big platforms just don’t care. As consumer that was scammed, we should have the right to report and get them shutdown too. I had experience of being contacted by people on Facebook trying to buy something from me and they were using a fake Facebook account and then a PayPal account for the transaction. After wasting an hour with them, I was sure they were scammers so I reported both to Facebook and PayPal. NOTHING happened. So, online scams basically face no consequences and these platforms they are using just can’t be bothered dealing with it
Scams is becoming the biggest rise in the increasing increase of consumer culture. If it’s to good to be true remember it probably is. Be safe and always double authenticate!! 💯
Wow - THANK YOU for all of your effort in exposing these crooks. Instagram is FILLED with scammers that remain active on the platform, while legit, reputable re-sellers get shut down - just crazy. Yes, you're right - "If it sounds too good to be true..." I like the saying: "Pay the price or buy it twice."
Thanks for taking action to take down the illegal website. I saw many fake brand names websites on the Facebook and they keep posting products with huge discounts. I reported them to Facebook but nothing happened.
Now that you mention Songmont! Can you please do their tumbled leather! I got one and love it so much but wondering if it’s really tumbled or embossed w a plastic finish? The bags quality is so amazing, the stitching, the glazing, the hardware, I’m hoping it’s up to par with you! Can’t wait til you review Songmont!
Thank you for this deep dive into the fake websites coming out of Turkey. It does seem that they are taking peoples money, but I wonder if any kind of goods are received by the consumers ? I would assume they get nothing and keep wondering what happened to the bags they ordered ? Thank you for all your hard work trying to alert these companies..I hope they look into this and file complaints and use lawyers to shut down these scam operations. For them to do nothing is negligent and harmful to the clients.
chances are, the customers don't know any better. people with money to spare and who are in the know have legitimate luxury suppliers such as Beymen and Boyner to go pay a visit at.
I have seen these scam ads all over instagram lately and wondered why nobody is doing anything about this. Thanks for taking action and informing people!
You should be very proud of the time and effort, you have put into researching this! Trying to help consumers in purchasing legitimate products, is very much appreciated! Thank you for everything you are doing! 💕
I enjoyed this video. I’ve come to learn about scam websites when I got into NFTs cause there are so many scammers behind the NFTs markets so that has helped me get so careful about who I shop with in regards to website addresses and not just clicking links sent for purchasing due to some being fake links that end up confiscating your accounts
I appreciate your help. I just got scammed my self. I reached out to my bank and they didn’t want to help. I’m waiting a call from a lawyer, hopefully they will be able to help me.
This is a very impressive 👍 Bravo! They seem to use an AI that scrapes the whole content of a website in few minutes and then allows you to buy a domain and publish the whole website also in minutes. But here is the catch : the copy that is created by AI can't remake perfectly aome details : either graphic details or code details. As you are very meticulous and you have a high level on conscienciousness you can catch those details. I think the next level of cyber security will be to create some plugins or some code that prevent these hackers to steal the original content. But right now the phenomena is too recent to be fully faced by developpers. Congratulations, you are doing a great job for your community and your industry. You are setting a model that hopefully will be followed by many ❤
I saw Polene bags on Aliexpress and not only Polene. I wonder if these fake bags caused downfall of Polene as a high quality brand? I saw few videos on RU-vid customers complain about poor quality of Polene bags. I own myself the bag I bought years ago, but these videos made me cautious about this brand now.
Big thank you Tanner Leatherstein for all the tireless, thankless efforts exposing these criminals👍. I am always wary purchasing anything online even via amazon. I am such an old school that I prefer buying the merchandise through brick & mortar establishments. Always do your research before purchasing anything online.
Wow, great video and thank you for all your efforts to get these fake websites down. Hopefully Polene and Songmont will use their resources to pursue these criminals. Not sure if you’re aware of Cosette in Australia which has been accused of selling fakes around July last year. They are under investigation by the NSW Fair Trading and are still operating!
Your vlog is fantastic and I truly appreciate learning from you. I need a tote, medium size, and am looking for quiet luxury. No LV, Chanel, of course cannot afford Hermes. Any recommendations would be appreciated from the bottom of my heart. Grateful!
Thank you for making it your business however, sometimes these brands can’t do much and the Lawyers do as much as they are getting paid for. Thank you Tanner ❤
Thank you for understanding. It's true that sometimes the situation is complex, and brands are limited in what they can do. I'm glad to be able to share these insights with you. Thank you for your support.
Thank you for this video. I'm sure these scammers are operating in many countries. They are also operational in my home country Belgium. Luckily I didn't fall for their too-good deals. Already looking forward to your next video.
Thanks for sharing. That's a commendable investigative work. The amount of time and effort you put into this is not a joke. Wow, you're better than a lot of our police force here. Shopify don't want to take action because they make money from every transaction - THAT IS DISGUSTING, CAPITALISM AT ITS BEST!
Great investigative work; I hope you’re able to make more progress! Visiting Istanbul last year, one of my biggest shocks was all the counterfeit/knock-off bags for sale in all types of shops. Some were rather poor quality and obviously imposters, but others were shockingly realistic. Evidently it’s allowed in Türkiye because there was no effort to disguise what was going on (as in other places in Europe and U.S.) 😮
Very interesting and very concerning, especially that Shopify isn't vetting their companies. It's just as bad as Facebook running ads for fake companies constantly and ignoring reports with the excuse "they haven't violated our terms of service". I will avoid Shopify completely now, was never a fan to begin with. Thank you for this video.
Good for you for exposing these scams. I recently found an Australian website selling Polene also with a fraction of the price. I was very tempted and tried to find some reviews but there was nothing. The website was very convincing and looked legitimate.
Great investigation!! Turkey is not alone when it cones to scammers creating fake merchant websites. I live in Canada and came across an online Dooney and Bourke outlet site specifically for Canada. I was so surprised to see it because D&B does not have an office in Canada, nor do they have any brick and mortar locations in Canada. The site had discontinued styles at rock bottom prices. I sent in some very basic information to set up an account and received no reply. No email was sent to me confirming anything, but it wouldn't have been difficult for me to make a purchase without an account. What if I had been naive enough to just make a purchase? I would have lost that money! So scammers will scam wherever they can! ✌🏾
This type of fraud is possible not only in the field of brands. It can be any famous online store or even a marketplace. In Russia, such substrate sites have been operating for several years, they are blocked, but they are created over and over again. There is one piece of advice - make purchases on familiar platforms and pay attention even to the name of the store's domain. And also, get a separate card for online purchases. For example, a virtual one. Good luck to everyone
Impressive investigating skills !! I would just leave it alone , you never know what those criminals are capable of; let the Brands deal with them. But Thank you for all your efforts 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
Thanks for the info!!!! I cant afford luxury so im always looking into brands like tory burch, kate spade and coach but i also love polene… i was thiking about buying my first polene for mothers day but now ill check twice the seller!!!
If you can’t afford the luxury, don’t buy in any random shops, try to buy at the serious second hand online shops, they will be secured by „trustee shops“ when something happened. You’ll get your money back. It is still expensive but you will get your stuffs. We need to avoid such scams online shops by not buying from them 👌🏽👍
In my area they sell dupes in nail salons hair salons boutiques. I love the look . I only buy direct. Even though there are times I’m tempted by an individual. I don’t. Fashionphile I don’t Il always be thinking it’s fake. I think it’s so big it can’t be controlled. Thanks for all your hard work 👍
You became the Polene police 👮 thank for this very informative all I see lately is people trying to scam you,even in Poshmark they shamelessly try to scam you with public messages trying to close a purchase outside the selling app.
That must have been a lot of work to research! It's a frustrating situation. And unfortunately, I'm not even convinced, that the brands themselves care very much. I mean, about good counterfeits, sure, as that affects their bottom line. But outright scams, where the buyer receives either no or a very inferior product? All that will do is turn people formerly to cheap to buy the normal retail price, into people, who will never shop for anything but the guaranteed original ever again. It's a win for the brands, really, if people realize, they have to actually buy in a store to get the real thing. Although admittedly, an authentic looking website is a bit different, maybe. But still. I'm pretty sure, most people seeing those prices actually do realize, it's not authentic. These aren't brands whose main clientele is 'too young to know' teenagers, after all. I mean, maybe I'm a bit cynic, but I could very well see their attitude secretly being: 'Yeah, serves those idiots right for being both cheap and dumb'. (And yes, I realize many people are struggling financially atm. I do myself. But we're talking about luxury handbags here, not food or gasoline. I can't afford a 500€ handbag either and I can't say, that it affects my quality of life in any way, shape or form).
This is happening all the time bro. Welcome to the internet. You can report them to whoever you want but unfortunately all your trouble will be wasted when they simply create a new site. The brands know this which is why they're relatively inattentive to the situation.
I wonder if you could look into domain registrar. I don’t remember which organization but there’s an organization managing domain name assignment and information. Maybe they have something you are looking for 🤔
Do you think Polene will reach level of Chanel one day? Not quality wise but as far as the hype. I have 2 of Polene’s bags and wondering if I should invest in more while their prices are affordable comparing to Chanel and such.
