A few days ago I decided to buy a product from an overseas company (who I subsequently purchased from), but at the last moment I noticed an NZ company was selling this product so I contacted them thinking if their price was 'in the region' I would buy from them instead. Their price was a lot higher so I wrote back declining their offer. The company owner sent me a wordy response as to why their offering was supposedly a better choice (they use the word "reputable") so I gave them the time of day and went back to to their website to read their spiel in further depth.

At this point an endorsement icon caught my attention. I had already been looking around various other sites selling this product and had never heard of this organisation (portrayed as an industry organisation, club or collective) so I clicked on the icon.

Something about the website didn't look quite right so I did some further digging using whois. It quickly transpired that not only was the endorsement website run by the same individual, so was every one of the supposed members (which he termed a "licensee") which I looked up.

To be clear there is nothing wrong about running multiple websites targeting different demographics, or in this case different countries. The issue here is this person has grouped them all together through a faux organisation which he then claims an endorsement from - both in the wording used and the iconography (ie: design symbolism) of the icon.

I have taken a screen shot and referred this matter to the Advertising Standards Authority. Personally (and suggested by the ASA) I think the Commerce Commission is more appropriate, but unfortunately they only seem to act on large scale stuff.

Have others come across this sort of dubious behavior locally?