The Plastic Merchant Returns?
The Plastic Merchant (TPM) was a gift card middle man that purchased merchant gift cards from many people and then re-sold them at a profit. Last year according to the company the owner got sick and then they basically went under, leaving a lot of people unpaid.
You can find the full backstory here.
A Possible Return
The TPM debacle hit a lot of people hard with many losing thousands of dollars. It serves as a great reminder to me to always understand the risk of what I am doing and to never float more than I can afford at any given time.
While the company and website have been gone for awhile, apparently they are making a comeback?!? A reader Tim J. noted that The Plastic Merchant website (theplasticmerchant.com) is back up with some very very interesting language.
Here is what the homepage looks like:
As you can see it is quite strange. Phoenix rising from the ashes? Really? I’m not sure about you, but I don’t exactly think people will be excited to sell to this person or company again. Note if you visit the site redirects to an Amazon affiliate link. The entire site is screenshotted above so no need to visit.
Is This A Troll?
To be honest, I still think someone must have taken over the domain, but I looked at the whois information and it doesn’t seem to look like it was transferred anywhere. The expiration date has remained the same. That doesn’t mean someone didn’t get access or perhaps TPM is planning to come back. Let’s hope if that happens that the people who lost money will be made whole.
I’m not holding my breath for that, but this certainly is an interesting development. What do you think? Is TPM planning a comeback or did a troll get a hold of the website? Let me know in the comments!
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 debacle. Could this defunct gift card reseller be coming back to life?){kind=link}
If (big IF) they really come back, their first announcement should be how they will make payments to people they owe. If there’s no mention of paying their dues and just want to start all over again on a “clean” slate, shame on people who never learned their lesson.
The site has been trolled or someone is using for nefarious purposes. The sentence structure is not from someone the English is their primary language.
Affiliate link ID is tpgsucks-20. LOL. FWIW, does not appear to be compliant with amazon’s terms.
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/operating/agreement
5. Identifying Yourself as an Associate
You must clearly state the following, or any substantially similar statement previously allowed under this Agreement, on your Site or any other location where Amazon may authorize your display or other use of Program Content: “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.” Except for this disclosure, you will not make any public communication with respect to this Agreement or your participation in the Associates Program without our advance written permission. You will not misrepresent or embellish our relationship with you (including by expressing or implying that we support, sponsor, or endorse you), or express or imply any affiliation between us and you or any other person or entity except as expressly permitted by this Agreement.
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/operating/policies?ac-ms-src=ac-nav
2. Disqualified Purchases
(e) any Product purchased by a customer who is referred to an Amazon Site by a link that sends users indirectly to an Amazon Site via an intermediate site, without requiring the customer to click on a link or take some other affirmative action on that intermediate site (a “Redirecting Link”),
Comments aren’t censored. Your comment was held in moderation because you had never commented before.
TPM’s website has a refresh meta tag in there to redirect you to their Amazon affiliate link after 60 seconds so they can still make money off of you. Genius.
We have some issues getting into edit posts right now, but it has been pointed out the site redirects to an Amazon affiliate link and may have been purchased at auction. Those comments can’t be approved until the issue with the back end is fixed, but I wanted to update everyone.
someone clearly bought michaelcdean.com too, and it’s pretty funny
(there was a change to the domain registry with it)
Unless he plans on reimbursing everyone he tanked. His comeback story has no leg to stand on.
[…] now there’s some new developments, hinting at a possible comeback. Shawn at Miles to Memories writes that The Plastic Merchant website (theplasticmerchant.com) is back up with some very very […]
It was sold at an auction back in January for $10.
Everyone needs to stop talking about this person. It drives traffic to his site that redirects you to Amazon so he’s earning a commission on all your Amazon purchases for the redirect. The more you talk about the guy, the more money he makes just from his site traffic.
After 60 seconds, it redirects to an amazon affiliate link with `&tag=tpm02-20` just like it was before.
Your last 3 posts have question marks in the title?
the right url is michaelcdean.com
for a second i though it’s April 1st today
Unreal. Shame on anyone if they actually DO anything with these guys. You’ve all been warned (and burned)..
you gotta be shitting me..