Beware Retail Scam - buckethats.co.nz

This post is a general notice, hopefully of use to someone. I haven't seen any reference to this store on here but the site has been up/registered for a number of years now.

My wife recently purchased a couple of hats from this website and received no correspondence or confirmation of purchase upon repeated reaching out to their contact email. She also noticed that their social media presence has very little user engagement and no posts for about a year, however, noticed one user trying to get a hold of them about undelivered hats from ~1 year ago. After confirming this user had the same issue as her, she reported them to CERT as well as her bank (payment was made on debit instead of credit card so not sure the likelihood of getting $$ back there).

CERT has now come back and confirmed them as a 'Retail Scam' and forwarded all relevant info to Cybercrime Unit at NZ Police as well as issued a takedown request to the hosting provider so hopefully it goes dark soon.

Edit: Their NZBN has been revoked recently (presumably by CERT or NZ Pol) - https://www.nzbn.govt.nz/mynzbn/nzbndetails/9429051306199/
The owner/founder is on LinkedIn and resides in the UK supposedly, all very odd why they would be so brazen with this.

Edit2: Now even more confused as 1 of the 2 ordered hats arrived in the post via China just now… It more seems this is classic dodgy Drop Shipping so have reached out to CERT to clarify.

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buckethats.co.nz
buckethats.co.nz

Comments

  • Yes (hindsight I know) but never purchase from an unknown online store with only an email address or form in the Contact Us link.

    Always look for a NZ phone number and / or physical address. Even then if you still have suspicions you can verify those by giving them a call or visiting/checking those.

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