Hi gang...
So about two weeks ago, one of our wonderful members turned in another site that was built solely for crooks to steal and sell my pattern.
How would seeing this make you feel if it was your hard work (and EXPENSES) that created this work:
Check out that Facebook Post!!!!! Notice "sponsored" - that means they're paying for that placement!
And... 103 likes (at the time I grabbed it) for STOLEN WORK!!!! All of those people going to the wrong place!
If that doesn't turn your stomach, maybe this will....
While I paid a $234.73 bill to Shopify this week, seems they probably paid $.01 (yeah, that's one cent!) for theirs! (Shopify is running a sale for new sites)
We learned:
🤬 Scumbags use paid advertising to get traffic with Facebook Ads 😳
🤬 Scumbags use a commercial mailbox address to appear like they are in London
🤬 Scumbags had a phone number that looked like it was from Germany
🤬 FB's "transparency" (what a joke, IMO) reveals the scumbags behind this may be in US and Morroco.
🤬 Their Terms of Service make the scumbags appear to be in US.
🤬 Scumbags have their site set so you can't right click anything...
🤬 You can't get YOUR copy of the Terms of Use you are entitled to.
🤬 Paypal shows a company called "Pattern Story" for the purchase I made of my own pattern.
🤬 We found AT LEAST six more sites that show these scumbags selling other designers' goods. (So what's saying they aren't harming 50 or more other designers???
THIS IS BIG THEFT: Even though I've still been pretty sick, I just LOVE you guys that have my back. I'm not letting this bother me, instead we all took care of the problem together! Woooooo Hooooooo
❤️ ❤️ ❤️ THANK YOU to the members that took positive action. ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
It took two weeks and 7 tries to get Shopify to kill their site. The first 6 times or so, Shopify only took my product down from the fraudulent site - and the scumbags put my product back up within hours. UGH! But as of today, the whole site has been down for about 5 days. Here's what you get when a store on Shopify gets removed by Shopify:
- - - - - -
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WHAT CAN YOU DO?
After the Fact Defensive:
🌺 1. Did you pay for a pattern from a site and PayPal (or any payment system) showed anyone but the original designer as the merchant? RED FLAG.
🌺 2. Track down the original designer & let them know what you found. Give him/her the URL web address of the site you suspect to be fraudulent.
🌺 3. If you VERIFY that what you bought was a rip off: FILE A CREDIT CARD CHARGEBACK - THIS MUST BE DONE WITH THE BANK THAT ISSUED YOUR CARD. This is IMPORTANT. File it as "stolen intellectual property" or "scam" as the reason. DO NOT just file a Paypal Dispute - it is not the same!
🌺 4. AFTER you have got a credit card chargeback completed, then report the site/seller to who ever you can see they are using as vendors that are allowing the theft to happen - such as Facebook, Paypal, etc.
This is a killer effective way to stomp out scumbags. This method will:
• cause the thieves to lose your sale. Zero dollar transactions are no fun to them!
• get YOU a REFUND - then please go re-buy the pattern from the legit designer
• create a massive hassle for the thief....
• cost the thieves the fees they paid to sell it to you
• cost the thieves about a $25 fee for the CREDIT CARD CHARGEBACK
• give the thief dings on their credit card processing reputation
• hopefully cause them to lose their current ability to accept payments
* potentially cause them problems in securing a new merchant account
I believe this is the ONLY way to fight Intellectual Property Theft that is so prevalent in the sewing/craft world these days! Ask me how I know!
I filed suit against 5 people in 2018 - we are now FIIVE YEARS later and no justice has been served... yet. Ugh. Except... I heard one of the scumbags I'm fighting with has paid her attorney $60,000!!!!! That's a sting that had to leave a mark. lol
In this current case, I reached out to the company that the scumbags were using to put 37 fraudulent 5 star reviews on their site of my product. They STOLE images from my customers and me - showing off our bags in photos we created over the years! Then they made fake customers to put fake reviews up with our photos!
The review company shut down the reviews on that site within a few hours. Kudos to them!
Nope. No more nice guy. From here on out, these people need to be outed for what they do/have done. Causing them shame and a severe hit in the checkbook is a fast and effective remedy.
If you are a designer having this problem - PLEASE DO THE RIGHT THING.
• File a DMCA Take Down Notice to the 3rd party (in this case, Shopify)
• If you see someone else's goods being ripped off, notify the legit creator!
Big, fat ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ THANK YOUs ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ again to everyone that helped me with this one!
But... they're still out there with other sewing, knitting, and other craft sites - all stolen work, it seems.
Go get 'em!
-Sally
Find me on linktree! https://linktr.ee/sallyjt