Is this a scam: Duta Export

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—- Updated on 29 Jan 2010 —-

Sometimes you just have to leave them alone and they would “hang themselves”. We reported about this site after getting a mail from a reader.

After we posted the article below, the site owner came in to clarify and supplied their “address”. So we removed this article and watched.

Today, the website is gone. We are not sure if it will come back up tomorrow, but if you are a customer, would you trust an online store that disappears overnight? As a customer, we do not accept reasons such as “bandwidth exceeded” or site down because the host shuts it down. So what happens to the products or the money that was paid? Would you get a heart attack if you’ve paid $500 for an item today, and see the site showing “bandwidth exceeded limit” tomorrow?

Well, my judgement was right the first time.

—– Earlier report below —–

We received a question as follows:

“I am from Ecuador and I am a business man who is importing goods.. One of them are electronics equipment. I found this page dutaexport.com  and I found you email in one page please, Could you help me to find out if this page is a fake one? I Can not find anything on internet information about dutaexport.com any feedback.”

We did a quick check, and find that it is will risky dealing this site.

1) Barely 2 months old. The age does not imply that it is a scam straightaway, but its risky for foreign trading. If its local, I won’t mind… but see para 2

2) They did not state a physical address. This is definitely a BAD sign. I would not buy and pay online even if its a “local” web company.

3) Most of the time, if they aren’t hosted in the US, then their local host server information would tell us their most likely location. However, this is just a guess.

4) Instead of listing in major trade sites, this site is listed at what appears to be duplicate sites (based on the favicon), including tradeholding.com, foodstradeholding.com, www.southafricab2b.co.za

5) The website is built with opensouce Oscommerce software with a standard template bought from a template site. Anybody can build-up an ecommerce site easily these days. Its even easier to fill them up with fake products. I won’t buy anything from any such sites with no contact information Except for a Contact Form.

6) What’s worse, they even added a privacy mask over their domain name. That is a bad thing to do for business sites, where identity is important. Real business man wants the whole world to know their contacts. Only scammers try to hide everything (except hotscams.com).

   Domain Name: DUTAEXPORT.COM
   Registrar: DIRECTI INTERNET SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. D/B/A PUBLICDOMAINREGISTRY.COM

   Whois Server: whois.PublicDomainRegistry.com
   Referral URL: http://www.PublicDomainRegistry.com
   Name Server: NS1.IDWEBHOST.COM

   Name Server: NS2.IDWEBHOST.COM
   Status: ok
   Updated Date: 07-jan-2010
   Creation Date: 08-nov-2009
   Expiration Date: 08-nov-2010

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For foreign trade (import/export), we would recommend companies that are listed on established sites, such as Alibaba.com or Ecplaza, which requires businesses to be verified. This increases buyers’ confidence and reduces the chance of getting scam. In conclusion, we would prefer to be careful when trading with a foreign company. If possible, pay them a visit to verify and get to know them, especially when importing large orders. Having said this, if there is no physical address written on any business website, we would NOT EVEN THINK about initiating any communication.

We are not affiliated to alibaba or ecplaza, both of which are established trade portals.