Be Careful, Counterfeit Clubs are out there.

I recently purchased what I thought was a new Ping G20 driver from an on-line company called GolfCloseOutSale. The price was good the product was not.  I have been a big fan of Ping for a number of years, I own three sets of Ping Irons, Eyes, ISI, and Zings and a number of Ping Drivers. The price of this new G20 was to good to pass up. When it arrived it was perfect. Hit well and sounded great, until the face cracked. At which time I took it to the local Ping dealer who ran the serials numbers on the club and shaft. Turns out it is not a Ping. It is a fake, a fraud, a Counterfeit. I notified GolfCloseOutSale as to what had taken place and have simply been told to go away. I know there are many many fine shops selling good equipment on the Internet. But I strongly suggest you stay clear of GolfCloseOutSale. If any of you folks have had similiar experiences let the rest of us know.

Bummer dude. Thanks for the heads up though. Take em to small claims court!

When it comes to sites like Ebay, if a deal is too good to be true, it probably is.

did you report them to the BBB?

A quick Google search shows pages of complaints.

A friend asked me to look at a shady site the other day. The first thing I noticed was that there was no customer service phone number. Red flag! Usually, if it is too good to be true it is. Name brand product pricing is controlled by the name associated with it (ie Ping will control the prices that they allow distributors to sell their clubs at including sales and closeouts. If the distributor (store) does not honor this, Ping will drop their account).

WTF are you serious????  thats awful...i got scammed this summer on a fake site selling Timberlands...

I just messed around with this site, and strike one is once you begin to checkout, they do not add a security layer (https).  This means any data you submit is not through secure protocols. Strike two is they are being hosted by http://www.hkidc.com/,of which I can find no relevant info at all.

Most importantly, strike three is that through a simple Google search returns of a negative sort are ranked on page 1.

Anytime you have concerns about a site where you will be submitting personal, financial or secure information, if any of the three simple things mentioned above raise a flag, I would look elsewhere.

If more people would simply do a quick "whois" search of the web site domain name there would be a lot fewer people caught by the scams.     One simple rule:  if it says China in the address and the registrant name is anything like you see below, steer clear .     There may be a legitimate site out there with that has these, but I've never met anyone who's found one.     15 seconds of your time is all it takes to look up the site and check for the biggest warning flag of all.

     Domain Name ..................... GOLFCLOSEOUTSALE.COM
Name Server ..................... ns5.hkidc.com
                                  ns8.hkidc.com
Registrant ID ................... hc021315086-cn
Registrant Name ................. xu zhenfu
Registrant Organization ......... xuzhenfu
Registrant Address .............. address_en
Registrant City ................. city_en
Registrant Province/State ....... province_en
Registrant Postal Code .......... 361002
Registrant Country Code ......... CN
Registrant Email ................ foraspell@163.com
Administrative ID ............... hc021315086-cn
Administrative Name ............. xu zhenfu
Administrative Organization ..... xuzhenfu
Administrative Address .......... address_en
Administrative City ............. city_en
Administrative Province/State ... province_en
Administrative Postal Code ...... 361002
Administrative Country Code ..... CN
Administrative Email ............ foraspell@163.com
Billing ID ...................... hc021315086-cn
Billing Name .................... xu zhenfu
Billing Organization ............ xuzhenfu
Billing Address ................. address_en
Billing City .................... city_en
Billing Province/State .......... province_en
Billing Postal Code ............. 361002
Billing Country Code ............ CN
Billing Email ................... foraspell@163.com
Technical ID .................... hc021315086-cn
Technical Name .................. xu zhenfu
Technical Organization .......... xuzhenfu
Technical Address ............... address_en
Technical City .................. city_en
Technical Province/State ........ province_en
Technical Postal Code ........... 361002
Technical Country Code .......... CN
Technical Email ................. foraspell@163.com
Expiration Date ................. 2012-12-16 03:31:33
    

Worse, it could be a factory reject taken from the trash of the company that makes PING. This would be even harder to detect by us consumers. From your description, it really sounds like you have the real thing, just but a factory reject.

Live Chat customer support is not a warning flag at all. Many legitimate companies are beginning to deploy multiple platforms for supporting customers, such as Live Chat assistance, as it is easier to multi-task and handle multiple customers via Live Chat and Email than it is over the phone.

You can use the following site to look up the registrant information of a domain: http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp

If any of the information looks suspicious to you, simply avoid the site. Also, as stated by another poster, any site dealing with Credit Card transactions should be using the HTTPS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Secure ) at the very least.

Last, but certainly not least, just remember to Google search data on the company/item you are purchasing. Just use common sense and remember that price is not everything. Most sites will sell counterfeit clubs at drastically reduced prices to lure in the potential buyer. This does not mean that you will not find counterfeit clubs being sold at MSRP or fair market value though, as this is essentially reverse psychology and will immediately help alleviate a potential buyer's concern over a cost that is "way too low to be legit".

Played with a guy not too long ago who had a new TM R11 driver he got off Ebay. It made the strangest sound. Everyone was pretty sure he got screwed with a fake knockoff. That sucks!

Golfsmith and Dick's Sporting Goods are rock solid on-line club sites too.