Got scammed

Was looking to pick up an Austrian wine for (forgive me) gluehwein, apropos to Robin's post. It was 2016 Hermann Moser "The Red Cherry" Zweigelt, Niederosterreich. I found a place online (Wholesale Wine Pro) that was offering a case for $100 including shipping. Seemed very cheap, but the wine is apparently no longer made, so a closeout price wasn't impossible. I've gotten quality wines in the last few years for as low as $72 a case. The order confirmation came from an address that was spoofing a legitimate wine website that is not involved. I eventually got a tracking number from a third email, noting "Please allow 15-20 days for shipping information to be updated on the logistics website". The tracking number didn't work. After a couple months I charged it back and was refunded.

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Just re-ordered, and the case was $200. Fingers crossed that I get it!

[David M. Bueker]

Who was the merchant? Possibly one of those crazy “will list anything even if we don’t have it in stock” places?

I assume he is talking about https://wholesalewinepro.shop.
If you click on wine, the first page has a bunch of canned wines/beers, and '61 Latour, '29 Cheval Blanc, '61 Ch. Margaux, '71 Louis Latour RSV all for $198.87. OK, not real. But understand how if Walt was searching for an inexpensive Austrian he wouldn't be looking at other wines. I wouldn't think $100 for a closeout Zweigelt was out of realm of possibility. Glad chargeback worked

[David M. Bueker]

Ah. Thanks. Misinterpreted that in his post.

Walt, I'd keep an eye on your CC (set alerts if you don't already). Can't think of any reason to set up site with unattainable wines at super low prices over than to attain cc info.,

Yes, I deliberately didn't link to the scam site because it can be risky to visit a site that is pretty much guaranteed to have poor cybersecurity practices, if not outright malware. Even though this site is correctly configured with "nofollow" tags, any appearance of a site can also lead it to being indexed and make it more likely to show up in search results.

The chargeback was successful.

To save folks the risk of visiting a spammy site, I screenshotted the legitimate and scam product listings. Without the URL, can you tell the difference? No particular order.

Screenshot 2026-01-28 at 22.10.50.jpg

Screenshot 2026-01-30 at 08.02.21.jpg

Aaand now the site is down. I reported it roughly 36 hours ago to the domain registrar, which is usually the most efficient way to get something like this removed. You'd hope PayPal, who handles the actual money portion of things, would be the one, but no... So attacking their web hosting it is. FYI, you can locate the abuse contact for any domain name by doing what's called a WHOIS lookup. Registrars are required to publish their abuse contact (sometimes it's an email, sometimes a web form) and act promptly on reports of spam, scams, etc. Feel free to ping me if you find such a site.