The email that arrived in his inbox said the merchandise was moving to be removed from the site because of an intellectual property violation. In sequence to resolve the thing and get the product redeemed, the owner would have to reach the law firm that registered the complaint.
But there was one problem: the firm didn’t exist.
Brushes4Less was provided the contact information for a company named Wesley & McCain in Pittsburgh. The website wesleymccain.com has portraits for five lawyers. A Google image search reveals that all five really work for the law firm Brydon, Swearengen & England in Jefferson City, Missouri.
The telephone number for Wesley & McCain doesn’t operate while the address belongs to a firm in Pittsburgh called Robb Leonard Mulvihill. The man who supposedly filed the complaint is not filed to practice law in Pennsylvania. One part on Wesley & McCain’s site stole letters from the website of the Colby Law Office.
The partner of Brushes4Less agreed to tell his story to News but asked that we not use his name out of firm for his privacy. As far as he can tell, and based on what News could confirm, Amazon was tricked into shutting down the seller’s key product workdays before the site’s active shopping event ever.
“Just minutes of detective work would be known that this website is a fraud, but Amazon doesn’t appear to want to do any of that,” the owner said. “This is like the Wild Wild West of intellectual property complaints.”
Brushes4Less is just one short business among millions that use Amazon’s large global operation to reach customers. But as the marketplace has grown to value for more than half of all goods sold on the site and as Amazon has increased its dominance across online commerce, seller complaints have increased.
Hot items are booted and honest sellers are suspended, victims of hateful complaints that some experts doubt are coming from rival sellers masquerading as lawyers. Just ahead of last year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday rush, a product of Samsung device sellers was suspended due to inaccurate claims of infringement. And sellers of hot brands extending from Nike to Michael Kors say they’ve got violation claims and stay notices even if they’re purchasing inventory from authorized distributors.