ASHEVILLE, N.C. (BRAIN) — A fraudulent website is offering products from Cane Creek Cycling Components, Wolf Tooth Components, and Whisky Parts Co. at discounted prices.
Cane Creek warned its Instagram and Facebook followers about the website through a shared post on Friday. Cane Creek wrote it was made aware last week through a partner about the website.
"We have no affiliation with this website," Cane Creek wrote. "They are not an authorized reseller, and we do not recommend anyone attempt to purchase anything from this website. ...."
A Wolf Tooth spokesperson told BRAIN on Monday that the company also learned about the website last week. "We immediately did some digging on our end to see that this website is a fraud, in that they are selling products that they don't have."
Among the products listed are a Cane Creek Helm fork, discounted from $569 to $89, and a Cane Creek Thudbuster seatpost, discounted from $179.99 to $95. A Whisky CX fork originally priced at $520 is on sale for $88. None of the Wolf Tooth Components is discounted to those degrees.
According to a Cane Creek spokesperson contacted by BRAIN on Monday, the site appears to have been created on Dec. 14 but it's not certain when it went live. Name.com was the registrar, but it has no connection to the URL. Cane Creek requested the site be shut down, but it remains up. Furthermore, the server location is listed as cloudfare.com, and Cane Creek reported the abuse to it. Cloudfare.com told Cane Creek it was acting as an IP Passthrough and not the hosting server and believed the site was being hosted by Server Mania.
"We have contacted Server Mania several times," the Cane Creek spokesperson said. "They have responded via chat but their abuse/support addresses have not responded."
Cane Creek reported the website to Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which has not taken any action.
"Our next step is trademark legal action," the Cane Creek spokesperson said, who added that Cane Creek also created a blog post further warning consumers of the fake website.
The Wolf Tooth spokesperson said the company is in contact with Cane Creek, Whisky, and "QBP at a higher level."
Shimano reported in October that a website appearing to be offering clearance bike and fishing gear was not legitimate. In December, Shimano said it successfully petitioned ICANN to have the website taken down.
"Scams like this were happening before the recent supply-chain issues affected the cycling industry, and they'll continue happening after the supply chain can once again meet demand," the Wolf Tooth spokesperson said. "It's difficult to say if this latest scam website and the previous one affecting Shimano are connected to the state of the cycling industry."
