For our customers and future customers, I feel it is good etiquette on our part to discuss some safety shopping aspects on the Internet, especially suspect scam sites that might look like professional merchandising operations. Very recently we have come across such a site that features “O Scale Trolley Kits” under their heading or category called “Collections”.
A few subtle items that might alert one to such nefarious sites is first, perhaps the pricing and so-called discounts. This is often borderline such as something that is “too good to be true” or imparts some sense of doubt or disbelief.
At the present time, All Nation Line does not have any authorized wholesalers, distributors or hobby shops, at least not yet. We also do not authorize the re-use of our name and brands that we own including logos, color schemes past or present art work, photographs or videos. Consequently, if these marketing attributes are found on other websites or print literature, they are not legitimate or licensed by us. Therefore, if our products are marketed on another website, it is 100% unlikely that you would get delivery if purchased. The exception of course would be All Nation products sold by us on sites such as eBay or secondary marketing of collections by well known third party sites or individuals selling used models and parts.
Typically, scam sites such as those mentioned, even though hosted overseas in local languages in the Cloud without identified domain name owners, will harvest photographs directly from the 3rd party sites that have products they are trying to sell. For example, several of the listings on the website we mentioned in the “O Scale Trolley Kits” are identical photos taken from our web site. Some of the photos are not even a product we sell but might be an old photo from our archive shared on our site. Thus, if you are not sure and a site says it is an All Nation Kit, the chances are very good you would be able to search our site and locate the photographs to confirm the ill use of our intellectual and media property.
There are several companies that specialize in determining whether a site is a scam, but these newly registered sites have little history to account for; however, the algorithms seem to be getting better at rating to estimate the site’s legitimacy for buyers.
If in doubt, All Nation Line customers can always feel free to check with us to avoid the pitfalls of a scam, gray market products or even counterfeit goods that may be of inferior quality.
In the realm of 3D Printing, many STL files are in the public domain with common non-commercial licensing and can be downloaded by modelers that desire to print their own models and parts. Others may offer to do the same for model builders that do not have 3D printers. However, permissions or licensing from the originator should be the pre-requisite which is something we are careful to do. In some cases we pay royalty on each copy sold. This in turn encourages authors to develop more prints in support of the OS2R community. Unfortunately, there are always dishonest persons trying to make a fast buck. So, credit should be given where credit is due for their work.
We have gone out of our way to digitize from our archive documents to share drawings, blue prints, old catalogs, graphics and information such as kit instructions in PDF files for easy download from our website. We do not authorize the resale of these items when they are free for the taking on our site.
I hope you give this summary some thought when shopping around, even if it is for other products not having to do with O Scale Model Railroading.
