TikTok Shop using my business information

bigcheese37

good morning, new to the forum but I hope someone can help! A few weeks ago I started getting TikTok shop customer return parcels. At first I thought someone was just using my name and address to dump returns at but after looking up the clothing items inside I found a TikTok shop with my name , business name and address.

I of course contacted TikTok by flagging it in the app. Despite many emails to their legal email address (no response) trying to use their website forms and the in app report it hasn’t been solved.

yesterday I sent them a photo of my drivers licence, my companies house certificate and all the return parcels but they said there was no violation found!!

I’m not sure what to do next. They have no telephone number to call and speak to a real person. Most of the responses are not based and when it does get flagged to a human they just don’t seem to understand the problem or find no violation.

it’s troubling seeing my details being used but I’m also now getting a return parcel nearly every day.

I found the same clothing items listed by other sellers and it’s the same thing each time. They’re pulling people’s names and business information from companies house. The full name of the director makes the shop name and the other information is the company details and return address. The items are shown items or similar that I’m assuming they post from china.

they’re smart enough not to use a vat number so HMRC won’t look at it. Companies house will only flag another business using your address to remove from the database and action fraud said they would take a report but it’s not really their area..

any help welcome

Alderbank

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6652553/tiktok-shop-using-my-business-information

Welcome to the forum.

This isn't anything to do with consumer rights, it's more of a small business thing, but you really ought to trademark the name of your shop.

As you have found, until you do that you have no protection against anyone else piggybacking on it causing you problems. £17 a year for 10 years is quite good value (registration for 10 years costs £170) and is not difficult to set up.

Here's how to do it:

https://www.gov.uk/how-to-register-a-trade-mark

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

https://www.tiktok.com/legal/page/eea/privacy-policy/en

Try Privacy Policy webform (link at bottom of page linked above), I don't they shouldn't be holding data that is incorrect.

Whilst a Trademark protects the business name, using someone else's name and address is a separate matter.

eskbanker

…action fraud said they would take a report…

Yes, they've now become the more accurately-named Report Fraud:

https://www.reportfraud.police.uk/

bigcheese37

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81858114#Comment_81858114

thank you for the suggestion but it’s not a trademark issue. They’re lifting the name and address of actually business’ and using them to setup TikTok shops with. I suspect there’s 1000s being setup a month. The issue is TikTok doesn’t have a way of reporting it. Their system is to deal with people stealing the identity of TikTok users / celebs rather then business information.

bigcheese37

I’ll give it a go thanks

Ergates

You won't get far with a fraud report - as you're not the victim of fraud (the sellers customers are).

TikTok won't care - they're not exactly an ethics driven company and a small business holder in the UK will have exactly zero leverage against them.

About the only thing I can suggest is that, if you have a website for your business, put a notice on there about what is happening because, obviously, nothing is going to happen with these returns and it's likely the victims are going to blame your company.

born_again

Anyway to return items to sender with a note that this is nothing to do with you & they need to take it up with the social media site they bought via.

no_real_names_please

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81858207#Comment_81858207

It does look like fraud though.