I am considering doing business with a Chinese company called Ardours
(www.Ardours.com). Whilst I have good intentions, I have become aware
of the sad fact that there are many less than honest vendors out
there. Can anyone offer research which gives good proof one way or
another. I do not consider registration with a Trade Site as proof.

Dear daz70r123,

It is generally hard to check the genuineness of Chinese companies, or
companies that claim to be located in China, because there are no
official companies registers or similar sources available. However, in
this particular case there are several things about Ardours that
appear rather suspicious.

- The only method of payment they explicitly offer is money transfer
via Western Union. That is a highly unsafe way of transferring funds
because it is impossible to find out who actually received the money;
and in case of a fraud, it is not possible to call back the transfer.
While reputable companies usually do not use this method of payment,
scammers love it since they remain anonymous and can't be tracked by
their victims.

- I checked the registration data of their Web domain, "ardours.com".
As I found out, the domain was registered only recently, on 25
September 2005; and it will already expire on 25 September 2006, after
only one year. Such short-lived domain registrations are usually
typical for shady companies. Often those one-year-domains are
"disposable" domains which their owners simply abandon once they are
not of use any longer.

- They have stolen the background for their animated logo from some other source:
http://www.ardours.com/images/banner/logo.GIF
You will note that the text on the right says "Ink Cartridge". This
has absolutely nothing to do with lingerie. Stealing images from other
companies' websites is brazen; stealing images that are not even
vaguely related with one's own product is incredibly stupid and
ridiculous. This is certainly not the behavior of a trustworthy
company.

- Their "Trade Rules" (
http://www.ardours.com/help.asp?action=tiaokuan ) seem to be taken
from some other source. The empty placeholders have not even been
filled with the name of the company or anything else: "Contract
Between you and ____ All issues resort to ____ court." This is
extremely sloppy, and it seems that whoever made this website did not
even know what that text means.
But that is not all. I have found the very same "Trade Rules" text on
the website of a Canadian company selling bathroom ceramics:
http://www.et-collection.com/help.asp?action=tiaokuan
Whoever made the Ardous website copied not only that text (even with
the empty placeholders), he (badly) copied the whole design of the ET
Collection website.

To me, Ardours looks like a hastily-made fraud, or at least a highly
obscure company. I would not do any business with them.

Regards,
Scriptor

This company is usually doing mail order that is why they request west
union transfer.
If you are interested in their product get a purchasing office in
china if you already have to handle it for you.