I've been looking for a specific component on the internet and found a number of suppliers that all have a .co.uk domain but subtleties in their use of english leads me to suspect they're not actually UK businesses. I also noticed that none of them publish their address in their "About us" link.

I've tried using companies searches such as Companies House but they all return no matches. Does anyone have any suggestions how I could find the true nature of these sites?

4 minutes ago, mjt said:

...n but subtleties in their use of english leads me to suspect they're not actually UK businesses. I also noticed that none of them publish their address in their "About us" link.

My immediate reaction is that these are the signs of a 'scam' company, though, could be wrong...

4 minutes ago, mjt said:

Does anyone have any suggestions how I could find the true nature of these sites?

I think it is safe to assume they are of Chinese origin. Certainly not UK if they don't have a company registration number for England and Wales.

Those were my thoughts also, which is why I wanted to establish their bona fides before dealing with them. I have no objection to dealing with non-UK businesses provided I know who I'm dealing with but when sites appear to deliberately conceal their true identity I will steer clear.

I pride myself on not being scammed online, do all the usual checks etc, until, one purchase last year. The web site looked really professional, no spelling errors, full payment system etc. Even got a 'director' record from Company House.They had 'in stock' an item I was after for ages which had recently been discontinued in the UK, so I jumped in with both feet.

It became clear as time passed, that emails weren't answered, and no delivery came. I had been scammed. Fortunately, I used my bank card and they were very understanding on me holding my hands up being stupid. I got a full refund (about £45), and some months later, the company, 'SassyDeals' had disappeared.

I've always been careful, but now I border on 'hyper' LOL

Im having to deal with something similar at the moment. And this is a company in England, Leyland in Lancs actually. Bought some items on ebay and paid using my debit card. I didnt use those items until a couple of weeks ago, only to discover they were crap. I made a complaint to them and theysaid they would refund my money to Paypal and i needed to claim it. I NEVER paid with paypal and they have been trying to avoid my emails all this week. Id had enough today and contacted my bank and opened a dispute about the payment. The bank has refunded my money on a temporary basis until they get in touch with the company that apparently has no email address so you can contact them. Not all bad companys are based abroad.

You can try a 'domain name lookup' to see if the details of who pays for the website address is available: https://who.is

e.g.: https://who.is/whois/amazon.com

Just tried that on most of the sellers on eBay seller stores. Came back as Fu Manchu 🤣

I got scammed twice in the past 3 years. 

One was clearly a fake website looking back.  They did have details showing, but it was all fake.  Not really sure what I was thinking.  Anyway, had ordered though Paypal, accepted responsibility, but to my surprise they still gave me a full refund. 

The other was a bit more complex.  It was a genuine retailer, who seemed to oversell items and then string people along, pretending he was getting more stock imminently.  Obviously that was never going to be sustainable long term!  He did offer me a refund at one point, but made it sound so genuine that more stock was arriving that I said I'd wait.  Few months later the store closed down completely and the website disappeared.  But they stupidly left the Facebook page up, so we could all start to see how many other people were being scammed by the same guy!  That time I paid through a bank (either debit card or transfer, can't remember which now) and the bank did eventually refund, but I had to jump through a lot of hoops.

Ultimately I'm not particularly bothered if it happens again.  Just seems to be a fact of modern life now.

@rd457 I tried it on the 3 sellers that I'd been looking at. For two of them the registrar is  GoDaddy.com, LLC. The third is 123-Reg Limited t/a 123-reg. There was no other information.

@unofix I find a lot of Chinese sellers on Ebay these days, and on Amazon Marketplace. They mostly do publish their head office location if you drill down.

I always use PayPal for anything I buy from ebay or from Facebook ads. I've had two occasions where I've had problems, in the first case the ebay item never turned up (quick refund from PayPal after complaining).

In the second case, the seller (Facebook ad, from China) added around £10 extra postage charges after checkout, then gave a £5 discount on the extra charges, so I was about £5 out of pocket. After complaining to PayPal and providing them with a copy of the original checkout, they refunded the extra within about 2 hours.

From my point of view, it's always worth using PayPal!

44 minutes ago, Alan G H said:

 

From my point of view, it's always worth using PayPal!

PayPal and most cards now have a robust system in place to action refunds where the transaction hasn't lived up to expectations.

5 hours ago, mjt said:

@rd457 I tried it on the 3 sellers that I'd been looking at. For two of them the registrar is  GoDaddy.com, LLC. The third is 123-Reg Limited t/a 123-reg. There was no other information.

GoDaddy has their own whois lookup page, so maybe that would actually offer up details about their customers? (I've never used it personally so I don't know). https://www.godaddy.com/en-uk/offers/whois-b