Fraudulent Flute Vendors! Beware!

[Geoffrey Ellis]

I just got an e-mail this morning from Casey Burns, sharing a link to a European based website that is selling flutes from a number of different makers. The catch is that they are not actually our flutes (yes, I'm honored to be among them!).

This vendor is supposedly based in both Portugal and Malta, and they have stolen images and descriptions from Irish Flute Store to promote what are probably Pakistani made flutes or their equivalent.

Here is the site:

https://ayaanproducts.eu/shop/woodwind- ... -for-sale/

As I said to Casey, I'd be very interested to know what the customer actually receives when they order one of my Essential Flutes! Could be anything, really. And I was delighted to see a photo of a Curly Roasted Maple Pratten flute that I made a couple of years ago (and sold through IFS) being sold as an anonymous "rosewood" flute. I nearly bought it myself since it was such a bargain. And I confessed to Casey that I felt some jealousy that his Boxwood flute was clearly more valuable than my curly...er, rosewood...flute.

So just a heads up to any of you fine flute players who are searching for a quality flute online, these guys have them! They carry the full selection of my Essential Flutes, and when you order one and receive a hollowed out branch with a couple of holes drilled into it, just know that it is my latest version of these instruments and I stand behind them.

[kkrell]

So just a heads up to any of you fine flute players who are searching for a quality flute online, these guys have them! They carry the full selection of my Essential Flutes, and when you order one and receive a hollowed out branch with a couple of holes drilled into it, just know that it is my latest version of these instruments and I stand behind them.

Good to know. Is this a written contract?

Some people don't get sarcasm.

[Nanohedron]

... probably Pakistani made flutes or their equivalent.

Ayaan Products is headquartered in Sialkot City, so your guess is a good one.

[Geoffrey Ellis]

Some people don't get sarcasm.

You make a good point. I should go on record as saying that I was most emphatically being sarcastic!

[Nanohedron]

I'm wondering if there are legal avenues to be pursued, here. After all, it appears that not only are we looking at fraud, but at potential damage to legitimate makers' reputations.

[TxWhistler]

Yes, Sialkot City is indeed in Pakistan.

I believe these may be the same people I had an experience with last summer. They have multiple websites. The one I was on seemed to be in CA, USA. They were selling Galeon Flutes. I ordered one and since they "seemed" to be based in the US I sent them my payment. Luckily when they were ready to ship the flute (from Pakistan) they sent me a picture of it and it didn't look anything like the pictures on their website. I think they have copied the pictures from the real Galeon website. Any way I told them it wasn't a real Galeon flute and I wanted my money back. Fortunately they did refund my money. I sent an email to the people at Galeon flutes and told them that their images were being used to sell fake Galeon flutes but I never got a response back from Galeon.

Here are few of their fraudulent websites:
https://scotoutfits.com/galeon-delrin-p ... ish-flute/

https://scottishkiltcollection.com/shop ... ts/flutes/

https://ayaanproducts.eu/galeon-delrin- ... ish-flute/

[Geoffrey Ellis]

I'm wondering if there are legal avenues to be pursued, here. After all, it appears that not only are we looking at fraud, but at potential damage to legitimate makers' reputations.

I briefly wondered the same thing. I'm not especially cynical by nature, but I thought it quite likely that the red tape and hassle involved in actually pursuing such action would not be worth it. It's an overseas company, probably fairly complicated laws requiring professional assistance unless there is some non-profit whose whole M.O. is pursuing such things. Meaning you hand it off to them and they run with it.

But I've seen too many instances of domestic fraud in the flute world (i.e. makers who take payments and never provide a flute) and how cumbersome it is seek justice--and with one particular U.S. maker they have burned many customers and are still burning them using the same tactics, and all complaints filed have done nothing to stop them. This is likely because no one is willing to spend thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer to seek meaningful reparations. Not worth it for a flute that only costs a few hundred dollars.

As for these particular fraudsters, I think they know very well that they can simply get away with it. If they were burning a big company or someone with some financial clout it would be pretty risky I think. Most of us flutemakers are not in a position to sic a lawyer on them .

[Nanohedron]

I suppose I see your point. It wouldn't be so bad if Sialkot just stuck to pushing their own wares and caveat emptor, but this bait-and-switch fraud business is of another order. It is crime.

[Geoffrey Ellis]

I suppose I see your point. It wouldn't be so bad if Sialkot just stuck to pushing their own wares and caveat emptor, but this bait-and-switch fraud business is of another order. It is crime.

Indeed it is. But my hope is that most flute buyers who are reasonably informed will already be a bit suspicious of what is being offered there. Having a curly maple flute described as "rosewood" should throw up some red flags, for example. I think there might be the odd flute buyer who has not done enough research and who might fall for the bait, but I would like to think that someone shopping for one of my flutes would not be inclined to purchase it from a company whose main focus is "made to measure" kilts Bit odd, that.

[tstermitz]

I'm amazed that in this one instance, they refunded the money.

Fraud is rampant on the internet, especially on smaller platforms or aggregators that provide an easy store-front and shopping cart. I bought an antique flute advertised on one such site, and after pawing around on eBay, noticed that they had simply stolen the images and description. Payment to an asian name. I cancelled the Visa charge, but I bet Visa can't get their money back.

With eBay and Amazon you at least have a large website that does "some" vetting of vendors. The frauds on Amazon tend to be look-alike products, claiming to be, for example, the latest high-end rowing machine for a quarter the price, and a tenth the quality.

Facebook is much less capable of dealing with frauds. I'm not naive (hopefully), but I clicked on a product at half-price in a facebook ad where I recognized the name of the company. I became suspicious and actually contacted the real company who said they only sold through their own website. I complained to Facebook on their fraud line (link), but I continued to get lots of fake/fraudulent ads for the same product under different websites for several weeks. FB is simply too large and too automated to actually deal with the problem.

Caveat populii!

[Nanohedron]

I think there might be the odd flute buyer who has not done enough research and who might fall for the bait, but I would like to think that someone shopping for one of my flutes would not be inclined to purchase it from a company whose main focus is "made to measure" kilts Bit odd, that.

When their wishful thinking is whipped on by their parsimony? Never underestimate the lengths to which people can go in letting themselves be hoodwinked by what they think is a bargain, even a bizarre one. It may not be free stuff, but it's almost as good. I mean, c'mon - it's just a tube with holes; those who pay more are fools. So they pat themselves on the back for their imagined acumen, but what then when the flute proves, as it must, to be an unstrument fit only for firewood? Where shall they turn? Surely not to themselves, because that didn't exactly work out.

And that's what we're here for.

[Terry McGee]

This sounds like a flute version of a more widely-spread scam. You snitch and post images from quality sites of things you can make scungy versions of. Then send the customer your scungy version. I've come across it in clothing. A friend was much taken by a gorgeous richly knitted full-length woolen garment at a very attractive price. But when it arrived, it was a different shade, used thinner wool, was shorter and poorly made and hung badly. In that case, it wasn't worth sending back as it came from overseas and the postage and hassle would have overrun the cost. It's disturbing that such a scam has now made it to the flute world.

Mods, can we add a mention of this issue to the Beware of Cheap Ebay Flutes sticky?

Geoffrey, is it worth contacting the website owner with a "Cease and Desist" order? And if no success, seek diplomatic intervention?

[paddler]

Did anyone try filling out a "review" on their site for one of the flutes in question?

I wonder how effective it would be for all of us to fill out "reviews" on their site, pointing out that the flute shown is not actually the one that you will receive,
and that this is in fact a scam. If nothing else, it would force them to do some work moderating the reviews. Just a thought, but I guess it is unlikely that you can
actually post a review, even though it looks like you can.

[Geoffrey Ellis]

Geoffrey, is it worth contacting the website owner with a "Cease and Desist" order? And if no success, seek diplomatic intervention?

I wondered that very thing (briefly) but some quick internet research supports my somewhat more jaded viewpoint that it would be a futile waste of energy. Here is a quote from one of the many online websites devoted to explaining legal jargon:

In practical terms, a cease and desist has no real legal weight. However, it fulfills an important function in the legal process. It establishes that you have told the offender about their violation. They now cannot claim they didn't know they were in violation.

In this case there are several objections to this approach. First, it involves hiring a lawyer to create the order. Second, a company based in Pakistan is not likely to be subject to any sort of ordinary legal pressure. Meaning that "international law" would probably have to be invoked. And even though I'm sure there are trade laws that certain countries agree to enforce, they are sufficiently obscure to me that I would need legal counsel to pursue them. And finally (and most depressingly) this vendor is perfectly aware that what they are doing is illegal. It stretches credulity to the breaking point to imagine that these folks are just making an innocent mistake in their "bait and switch" caper.

As for diplomatic intervention I honestly wouldn't know where to begin with that. I might send an e-mail to the vendor asking them to desist, and paddler's notion of getting a critical mass of bad reviews has some merit, even though they can probably remove such reviews from their site. They would have to put some work into it. And there might be an international version of the Better Business Bureau to which a complaint can be submitted. I don't know how effective that would be, because I don't think that the Better Business Bureau is that effective within the U.S.. Meaning, one can file a complaint and it will be on record, but very few people consult that information before making a purchase! What happens is that they go there after they have been burned and then discover that there was a complaint against the vendor, but too late to do anything except lodge another complaint that no one will see . This has happened with the aforementioned flute maker who has repeatedly cheated his customers.

My guess is that legal options for dealing with Pakistan are already limited and not terribly effective, which is why a great many scams are hosted there (lots and lots of the telephone scams). I had a memorable phone conversation with a man who I'm fairly certain was Pakistani (this is just a hunch--he might have been in India). He claimed he was from Microsoft "security" and wanted to access my PC because they had found a problem with it. I jollied him along for a bit and then after having some rather amusing back and forth let him know that knew he was a scammer. He began to sputter and deny it, and it made me laugh. That really enraged him, and he basically said that he would inform the FBI about me (to what end, I wondered?). This made me lose all restraint and I started cracking up, and he was hopping mad at that point, making threats and insulting me. The whole thing degenerated into a nice, wholesome farce which I enjoyed more than I should have. But if I had chosen to complain about it, there would be nowhere to do so.

So all of this to say that I'm just trying to remain philosophical about it. I'm not really worried that my reputation will be materially damaged by this nonsense, though I am sorry for any customer who gets stung by them. Definitely not going to lose any sleep over it.

[Nanohedron]

Mods, can we add a mention of this issue to the Beware of Cheap Ebay Flutes sticky?

By all means.