1st coffee shop - are they legit?

November 14th, 2010, 10:39 pm

Has anyone done any business with a web site called 1stcoffeeshop.com? There prices are too good to be true and you know what that means. Any input would be appreciated. I'd love to get a lever machine for my brewery.

#2: Post by HB » November 14th, 2010, 11:35 pm

No idea, but the results from the DNS registry lookup for the domain do not inspire confidence:

Creation Date: Feb 15 2010
Expiration Date: Feb 15 2011
City: Medan
State: Sulawesi Utara
Country: Indonesia

The lack of any address or phone number in the "Contact Us" page is equally disquieting. According to the Wayback Machine, this domain has been around for awhile, but has no meaningful content (one graphic page). According to my searches, it was allowed to expire last year after idling for years and picked up by the current domain owner. My searches for any discussion of this site were fruitless.

#3: Post by **randytsuch** » November 14th, 2010, 11:56 pm

There is a thread at CG on the same subject, the guys over there don't think this site is legit either, between the location, lack of information on the site, and the too low prices, I wouldn't take a chance with them.

Randy

November 15th, 2010, 9:00 am

Thanks! Those were my thoughts too.

#5: Post by **JohnB.** » November 15th, 2010, 11:12 am

Shipping cost accurately reflects their location. $250 Flat Rate per item or $350 per order to get that $1200 Duetto 2 to Ct. $3900 for a 1 group Linea? What do these normally sell for?

#6: Post by **Yeti** » November 15th, 2010, 2:30 pm

They also claim to be BBB accredited, yet don't show up on the BBB site.

#7: Post by HB » November 15th, 2010, 2:56 pm

They also claim "secure ordering", whatever that means, but the checkout doesn't switch to SSL; if I tried switching to it explicitly via https, it fails. Amazingly they will ship two 4 groups all the way from Indonesia to the US for a flat rate $235.

#8: Post by **jlhsupport** » November 15th, 2010, 3:27 pm

Definitely an identity theft website. We had a rash of shoppers asking about similar sites with prices that of course turned out to be too good to be true. I reported them to this database:

http://db.aa419.org/fakebankslist.php

They mainly deal with the Nigerian advance funds scams, but they also keep a list of fake storefronts that use stolen or fake BBB-accredited logos. I think we found about 12 sites that looked identical until the perpetrators finally gave up for a while. Looks like they are back at it, so I wouldn't be surprised if some new ones pop up that look just like the 1stcoffeeshop "site." I'm reporting this to the database, as they are very good at getting these kinds of sites closed down.

#9: Post by **walkingbean** » November 20th, 2010, 1:23 pm

maybe they are trying to confuse people between the legit 1stincoffee.com folks versus the apparently UNLEGIT 1stcoffeeshop.com

#10: Post by **benhogan** » January 14th, 2011, 9:59 am

Hope springs eternal! I sent them an email bout a week ago with question just to see if and how they replied.

I think everyone's instincts are correct: too good to be true!!! darn it, I could almost taste the coffee