Dubious Ecommerce website duplicating our listings at exhorbitant prices

[jfrm]

I run an Ecommerce shop. We recently noticed a website selling most or many of the products that we sell. e.g. toyscentral.uk. It looks like any other Ecommerce shop. As a lot of our products are unique to us and we don't sell wholesale, the only way they could obtain some things is by buying from our retail website. The prices they are selling at are astronomical e.g. one product we sell for £95, they have listed at £304. The company seems to be based in the USA. On the UK version of their site, the phone number says 'Thanks you for ringing Toy Central, all our agents are currently busy' and then hangs up. They also have a .eu domain version of the website with a different phone number - this seems to redirect to a phone in the USA and a person does pick up the phone.

There are a number of issues. On the plus side, maybe if they are legit and just buy things from us as orders arrive to resell on, maybe we are getting extra sales.
On the -ve side, they have breached our copyright which is technically illegal, they are probably devaluing our brand by selling our stuff at excessively high prices. Presumably they can't keep track very well for when items are out of stock so again their association with us may devalue our brand. Since they are copying our sales texts and duplicate content on the web compromises SEO, they may be adversely affecting our Search Engine Rankings. And at their prices, they can't be selling much we makes me suspect they have ulterior motives - maybe a phishing website or something else fraudulent or malicious.

So 2 questions:
1. Should we care? Are the negatives worth spending significant energy trying to do something about it?
2. Are they actually doing anything illegal (other than breaching our copyright for text and pictures)?

thanks for any thoughts and opinions.

 

[intheTRADE]

toyscentral.uk are part of Handel Nine Global (handelnine.com/our-brands) who are US based and have a number of different brands across different sectors.

I am very familiar with their brand Home Loft

 

[japancool]

I may be wrong about this, but I have a feeling that I've heard about them before. I think they're scraping listings and showing them on their own site, then presumably ordering from you to effectively dropship.

Sorry to be so vague, but I can't recall exactly where I heard this.

 

[WaveJumper]

Interesting there link to Toyscentral on handelnine.com website does not work (may mean nothing of course) personally reading the blurb on their website wants to make me throw up so US but everyone to their own

 

[jfrm]

Thanks for the responses. Japancool, that is exactly what we think they're doing. I mean it's not exactly criminal but it does seem odd/dodgy. My colleague noticed earlier that our Norton Protection software prevented her from clicking on a link to their website, earmarking it as 'potentially malicious'. Possibly a false positive but it adds to our uneasy feeling.

 

[Mr D]

Thanks for the responses. Japancool, that is exactly what we think they're doing. I mean it's not exactly criminal but it does seem odd/dodgy. My colleague noticed earlier that our Norton Protection software prevented her from clicking on a link to their website, earmarking it as 'potentially malicious'. Possibly a false positive but it adds to our uneasy feeling.

Don't complain about it - they can supply only by you selling to them.
Of course they are selling at a higher price than you, that is how businesses make money. Buy cheaper than selling for.
Net result for you is extra sales.