Musician's Friend Scam Site

JoeVermont

JoeVermont

Well-known Member
There are ads floating around social media of a "Warehouse sale" at Musician's Friend.
Prices too good to be true: Tour Customs for 400 bucks, Made in USA Strat for 500 bucks.
The URL has a -us.shop domain. I did report the AD to Facebook.

Be careful out there!
 
JoeVermont said:
There are ads floating around social media of a "Warehouse sale" at Musician's Friend.
Prices too good to be true: Tour Customs for 400 bucks, Made in USA Strat for 500 bucks.
The URL has a -us.shop domain. I did report the AD to Facebook.

Be careful out there!
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Those FB and IG ads are treacherous. Mrs. Stroman got scammed by one when trying to get me a Christmas present. Legitimate company, but the ad on IG led to a scam site. 😔

The fraud team at my company, as an example, takes down about 180-200 counterfeit websites every month.

Like Joe said, be careful.
 
Make the hosting company that displays the add responsible for this as well as making anyone who honors a misrepresented identity(as part of identity theft) responsible and the issue would evaporate.

Passing the cost onto the consumer is what business does best.
 
Otto said:
Make the hosting company that displays the add responsible for this as well as making anyone who honors a misrepresented identity(as part of identity theft) responsible and the issue would evaporate.

Passing the cost onto the consumer is what business does best.
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How can you do that? say for example I sell cymbals and I have a reputable company, then someone makes a fake website using my pictures and "Sells" my cymbals, of course the person who buys from that fake website is never going to get a cymbal from me or see his money back.
I had nothing to do with that transaction and I am not responsible for people going to fake websites, if I was responsible I would be out of business.
You could say I am partially responsible because I was aware of the fake website (yes maybe I was and I reported it and FB or whoever took it down).
Do you know how fast 10 other websites would pop up? People need to wise up and if something seems too good to be true it probably is so in order to find out go to the source in my example my actual website and see if I am in fact offering those prices. Reputable websites have a contact us link where you can make them aware of those issues and they will take action. Also Facebook or other hosting companies are not going to fact check every single add from the millions they run everyday, that would be impossible, contact them as well to make them aware and they will remove the offending add, but again one removed 10 replacing so the better defense is to do your own research before spending your money.
 
doggyd69b said:
Facebook or other hosting companies are not going to fact check every single add from the millions they run everyday, that would be impossible, contact them as well to make them aware and they will remove the offending add, but again one removed 10 replacing so the better defense is to do your own research before spending your money.
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I disagree here. I think it IS Facebook's responsibility to vet the advertisers they accept money from. They just haven't been forced to because, well, money talks and they have a lot of it.

You shouldn't blame the victims of these scams. The ads aren't always "too good to be true." These fraudsters are very adept at fooling people, and getting better at it.

I do recognize the platforms face a huge challenge weeding them out, but they are the ones raking in big bucks from these fraudulent ads, so the onus is on them to a great extent. They shouldn't be allowed to just shrug their big electronic shoulders and say, "Oops sorry! I didn't know!" while stuffing their pockets with fraudsters' ill gotten gains. I think they call that organized crime.
 
Stroman said:
I disagree here. I think it IS Facebook's responsibility to vet the advertisers they accept money from. They just haven't been forced to because, well, money talks and they have a lot of it.

You shouldn't blame the victims of these scams. The ads aren't always "too good to be true." These fraudsters are very adept at fooling people, and getting better at it.

I do recognize the platforms face a huge challenge weeding them out, but they are the ones raking in big bucks from these fraudulent ads, so the onus is on them to a great extent. They shouldn't be allowed to just shrug their big electronic shoulders and say, "Oops sorry! I didn't know!" while stuffing their pockets with fraudsters' ill gotten gains. I think they call that organized crime.
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Not arguing that point it is Facebook's responsibility, but are they going to try to buy a product to see if they get it in order to verify they are legit?
So yes they should verify every advertiser's they have but the law here is too lax and they won't.
 
as always, even before the internet....buyer beware!!!

red flag #1 - prices too good to be true
red flag#2 - seller info looks/seems shifty (in this case the ".com" part of the URL

my personal red flag #1 is - if I can't touch the actual item before buying, I am not buying
 
Here is an example of how subtle fake urls can be. If you don't have the two side-by-side, you probably wouldn't notice.

This is why I never ever buy from social media ads. It's tricky enough when you are trying to find the correct url yourself.
 

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Xstr8edgtnrdrmrX said:
red flag #1 - prices too good to be true
red flag#2 - seller info looks/seems shifty (in this case the ".com" part of the URL

my personal red flag #1 is - if I can't touch the actual item before buying, I am not buying
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No always, as Stroman said, sometimes there are fake websites that don't offer anything cheaper than the real websites, everything is made to look legit so potential victims have no reason to suspect anything is wrong because nothing is "too good to be true" so they shop and they buy then they become victims of those scammers.
It has become more sophisticated, and now with AI, people that barely speak English can sound like they do (online they would read like proper English speakers ) Those things paired with a legit looking website and product are much harder to spot. Harder but not impossible, the one thing that at this point nobody can avoid is that URL will be different when there is a fake page. so as a consumer just go to say Pearl.com and not Pearl.com/drums
 
doggyd69b said:
How can you do that? say for example I sell cymbals and I have a reputable company, then someone makes a fake website using my pictures and "Sells" my cymbals, of course the person who buys from that fake website is never going to get a cymbal from me or see his money back.
I had nothing to do with that transaction and I am not responsible for people going to fake websites, if I was responsible I would be out of business.
You could say I am partially responsible because I was aware of the fake website (yes maybe I was and I reported it and FB or whoever took it down).
Do you know how fast 10 other websites would pop up? People need to wise up and if something seems too good to be true it probably is so in order to find out go to the source in my example my actual website and see if I am in fact offering those prices. Reputable websites have a contact us link where you can make them aware of those issues and they will take action. Also Facebook or other hosting companies are not going to fact check every single add from the millions they run everyday, that would be impossible, contact them as well to make them aware and they will remove the offending add, but again one removed 10 replacing so the better defense is to do your own research before spending your money.
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The fraud in this example is perpetrated against both the consumer and the retailer.

In this case, the provider of internet service to the fraudulent party should hold responsibility.(along with the fraudulent party, of course)...along with any transaction services abused by the fraud.

Provide a service to a fraudulent party, be held responsible. tighten up security/identity verification.

Quit dropping the cost to the consumer....or be boycotted!...preferentially held accountable by law, imho.
 
Otto said:
The fraud in this example is perpetrated against both the consumer and the retailer.

In this case, the provider of internet service to the fraudulent party should hold responsibility.(along with the fraudulent party, of course)...along with any transaction services abused by the fraud.

Provide a service to a fraudulent party, be held responsible. tighten up security/identity verification.

Quit dropping the cost to the consumer....or be boycotted!...preferentially held accountable by law, imho.
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I don't disagree with anything you said, I just say that it is very hard to police millions of fake websites popping up everyday. And the consumer needs to educate themselves about this in order for it to become less effective. Nobody is dropping the cost to the consumer, a scam is a scam, do you expect the ISP to refund you on the cymbals you didn't get? That's never going to happen.
 
Saw the ad for the fake site again last week on FB.... reported it... again. Here's their response...
BTW, it does seem like the scam site has been taken down, so that's good.
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JoeVermont said:
Saw the ad for the fake site again last week on FB.... reported it... again. Here's their response...
BTW, it does seem like the scam site has been taken down, so that's good.
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That's frustrating to me. They rely on you to hide it rather than them taking action.

I quit facebook some time ago. I miss interacting with my far-away family on there, but I generally like my life better without it.

As for the scam site being taken down, that was probably due to efforts by MF. That's what happens with us. The counterfeit site gets reported to us (or our team discovers it) and we get it taken down.

Thanks for fighting the good fight and reporting the bad ads. 😊
 
I've seen these ads on Facebook saying " we're overstocked with xxxxx Laptops just submit or enter xx here
not seen any Musical Instrument ones
 
Stroman said:
I quit facebook some time ago. I miss interacting with my far-away family on there, but I generally like my life better without it.

Thanks for fighting the good fight and reporting the bad ads. 😊
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The first time I spotted the fake site I did send a message to Musician's Friend about it.

Ahhh, Facebook! There are literally only two things keeping me on the FB; promoting my band and a wonderful Yamaha drum group called the Yamaha Drum Closet. I mean, seriously, it's an awesome, supportive, and collegial community.

Family wise we stopped using Facebook messenger and moved to Signal. At least that way I'm pretty sure our chats are not being used to form ads that pop up in my browser... pretty sure, anyway.
 
This particular fraudulent MF ad has been on fbook for weeks now. They've probably had thousands of complaints, but the ads are still there.

As far as I'm concerned, fbook is promoting and profiting from fraud.

Glad I saw this thread! I almost bought something.
 
That Ad showed up again on my feed page just a few days ago.
Automation without Supervision.
Welcome to Facebook!!
 
Folks, be extra careful when you are on Facebook. This showed up just now on my Facebook feed.

If I click on the picture that you see, it takes me to a web site called guitarcenterofficial . I have no idea what this web site is. The page design and logos look similar to the guitar center web site, but it has hard to believe 80% off prices. The "whois" web registration application shows that it was registered just two days ago. Here are three screenshots.


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striker said:
Folks, be extra careful when you are on Facebook. This showed up just now on my Facebook feed.

If I click on the picture that you see, it takes me to a web site called guitarcenterofficial . I have no idea what this web site is. The page design and logos look similar to the guitar center web site, but it has hard to believe 80% off prices. The "whois" web registration application shows that it was registered just two days ago. Here are three screenshots.


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Also, if you are on a Windows laptop, this is what it shows when you hover the mouse over the real Guitar Center advertisement logo. The logo shows that it has 1.7 million followers.

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This is what it shows when you hover over that suspicious web site. It has zero followers, no web site listed, and that goofy looking logo!!!

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I didn't grab a screengrab, but I think I got directed to a fake Guitar Center ad today on FB as well. If it weren't for this thread, I might have fallen for it--new Zildjians for almost half the normal price? Too good to be true, right? Except that Sweetwater very recently had new 16" Zildjian Sweet hats on sale for almost half the price, so it seemed plausible. It was only after I'd click on it that I thought, wait a second, and looked more closely at the url, which had that extraneous "us" added.

So thanks to Joe and the rest of you for keeping me on my toes.
 
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