Knock Off Company!!! Read!!
 

Well, we seem to have stumbled upon a wanna be reseller of *** products. As we all know here, *** does NOT, and I repeat NOT have any resellers. AEDstudios and *** studios only are the only place that has authority to sell *** products and services.

However, www.importstylez.com based out of Toronto, Canada, has decided to nominate themselves as the first. But let me give you a little FYI on this company.

When I checked there site, convinietly Kristi's car popped up and so did "SOrry Officer's" listed under 98+ grand am body kit. Which we all know is incorect. Im sure he did not get permission from Kristi's nor the other *** owner to use there pictures. I asked for pricing and Info on the company that designed the kit and he told me he would call me back with pricing and info. I immidietly contacted Susana and Len who contacted the company and gave them whatfor. He then called me back irate in which I continued to play dumb. He then asked me if I was serious about my purchase in which I told him if he continued to accuse me of **** I would not purchase through him. He then apologized and said the kit would cost me $1,800 +shipping. I asked him if he had them in stock, in which he replied "no, our kits come out of cali, and all over the world." Which means he purchases the kit at the discounted price, marks them up and just orders them and has them shipped to your home straight from the distributor. This is a real stupid way to run your business.

This is illegal and I just wanted to inform you of a fraudulant company attempting to sell *** products.


Chris Az

P.S. The 2 car depicted on the site might want to e-mail this company and have there car pictures removed from there site. Im sure they did not contact you to ask your permission.

Thanks for the heads up.........the only company who has permission to use my cars pic is APOC and sites I post the pictures to willingly. I emailed asking for compensation or for him to remove the picture.:D

Good find:thumbs:

Really appreciate that Sorry officer. Wouldnt want your car associated with a **** company like that. Then to top it all off they try to charge even more for the kit. Who in there right mind would buy from them?/?:stupid:

oh yeah and I almost forgot, that $1,800 price tag for the kit was not including spoiler. LOL What a rip!

This is what I SENT.....

I am not sure if you had noticed but you have a pic of my car posted on you
website for sales reasons. (1999 Green Blue Metallic Grand Am GT with ***
kit and Razzi Wing) I am also pretty sure you did not have my permission to
use my cars picture for sales reasons. So unless I am compensated in some
way for my car appearing on your website I would like you to remove it ASAP.
If you would like to compensate me for use of this picture make your offer,
otherwise the picture will not be used for solicitation.

Thank you.

Kyle A. Lentz
Installation Manager and Regional Director
Storage Systems Of Wisconsin
N16 W23430 Stone Ridge Drive
Waukesha, WI 53188
(262) 650-7700

REPLY......

I have told your friend from *** the pictures will be Removed. I'm sure he
contacted you.
Nice Car.

Take Care

yeah the friend was kristi, she contacted them as well.

they still have our cars up!!!

I just sent them this,
Hello,
You have my 2000 Red Pontiac Grand Am with the *** body kit pictured on your site, Please remove it,
Thank you


I just got emailed back and they said they would remove it,, but who is to say there not going to go back on Cardomain and pick off someone elses without permission!!!!!!!!!!

Ive been checking it periodically. ANd eys they are still there. Now also I noticed there policy it reads.....

"Please note: All the above photographs have been sent in by their respective owners with full permission to use said images on the importstylez.com website"

THey are violating there own policy. That was directly from there website.

Sent an email expressing interest to see what I would get for a reply.....

Here it is:

-----Original Message-----
From: Sales@Importstylez [mailto:sales@importstylez.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 6:48 PM
To: Danner, James
Subject: RE: 98+ Pontiac Grand Am Kit

What kit are you looking at.
We do not stock nor sell the kit on our site under body kits section.
If you like that kit you may contact *** directly
AEDCentral.com
949-362-1048
760-639-1233

We do however sell the Andy's Auto Sport combat kit Our Own line IS street fighter kit, and the new Importstylez Blitz kit.

Thank you.

All kits can be painted and then shipped to a home or Business address.

Price on kits are from 750-1750 USD not painted.

Importstylez.

yeah, they dont even have the AAS kit listed. And what they do is for instance, the AAS is $799 directly from AAS. THey will charge $999, you send them the money, the call AAS have them ship the kit to you, pay the $799 and whala $200 in there pocket.

Thanks for the heads up on that company. I was on their site a couple times and figured they may have redone certain aspects of the kit, but I guess not.

[begin rant]
There are those people that will take someone else's ideas and make them their own. Then they will most likely illegally sell or resell them without permission of the companies they are copying. I avoid those companies at all costs and tell others to do the same. I like to give credit where it's due!!!

Even if the price was cheaper on that Import site, I still would not buy the kit from them. You can't put a price tag on principle...

[/end rant]...

Nice rant. LOL:thumbs:

Good looking Red and Green GA pics still on site under "body kits".

Man that's horrible:mad: whata dehk!
looks like he stole that right from like a n.body photo or something.

Hey Team_*** who is the owner or founder of ***??

The owner Founder of Automotive ENgineer and Design is Leanord Dodd and Susana Grammer.

totally not trying to start a war here. but where in law does it state you cannot use a pic from the internet so long as it does not have ANY representation of a person or their information on it (i.e. their face, people in background, license plate, name, initials, etc. etc.)

For instance, my pics are on Cardomain..that is a public site run privately. Whatever I put up there is fair game. Unless you have your ride trademarked, patented, incorporated, etc., where do they owe you anything?

I have seen this come across a lot on here with pics. Guru's were justified seeing the person removed his watermarks, etc. But if yours is just a pic, thrown on a public internet site, I don't see anything illegal about that. Credit to the owner is out of respect.

well for starters on cardomiain...u willingly put ur pictures on the web....for enterainment purposes only not to be used as anything other than that..

Not sure what cardomain's policy is, but most sites have in a license agreement that in viewing the site you accept terms and conditions which many times include that all information on the site including images are property of either the site or the respective member of the site and all images are copyrighted, blah blah... I don't know how well it stands in court, though.

OK, here is what was said to me from a co-worker who is a very smart guy. Unless the photo, or file, is watermarked, copyrighted, trademarked, incorporated, etc., it is legal for another person to use it online so long as there are no distinguishing marks similar to what I referenced in my question above. On top of that, if there is an issue with the pic, the author of the pic (Kristi & SO for example) would have to initiate the legal action by going through the big court and legal drama, thus costing them time and money and probably not breaking even (your not gonna get thousands of dollars, etc.). In addition to that info, he said that small alterations in the picture (not removing watermarks, trademarks, etc.) would also make it acceptable to use the picture (i.e. changing the background, color of car, whatever).

For example..take the music industry..P.Diddy and many others sample music. If they sample a beat directly it is infringement, however, if they add a beat, remove a beat, change tempo, or tweek it any sort of way from the original, even if minute, it is legal.

My comments here are for informative purposes only. I have just been a little uneasy seeing people attack others because their car is pictured on the persons website. I don't want people threatening business owners and end up looking stupid. Plus, we should try to be educated car enthusiasts so as to not get labeled with a bad rap.

SORRY! but you guys are being un-american!!!
 

AMRAAM4 is correct any picture taken in a public place (like a show) is fair game.....


Besides....If I buy 10 *** kits and find people who are willing to pay $5,000 each for them THAT IS MY RIGHT AS AN AMERICAN!!! And your precious Len and Susanna are still making out like bandits.......

(I would be angry though if someone was using my car on their site the make $)

TEAM_*** you should re-read the constitution of our country....WE ARE IN AMERICA ! FREE ENTERPRISE! If I buy something I can sell it later FOR WHAT EVER I WANT! The guy never said he was the manufacturer......

I dont need to read the constituion. I understand what he is trying to do. But its also un-ethical what he is trying to do. But he also stated *** is HIS distributor in which they are NOT!!! That is lying directly to your customers!! THats what Im saying. Pay attention! I understand its not illegal, but its still unethical. I didnt have the oppertunity to change my thread originally and remove illegal.

...it might be unethical in your eyes... but it's not illegal to resell a product for a mark-up... that happens all the time in business... not sure about the whole picture argument, but i think koolgt and amraam both have points...

rob... i do believe though with your music example that artists have one suits against another artist if the beat is too similar... even if it's just one note or two...

Come on now guys...this thread started off ok!!

Try to keep it that way!!! :)

Not only is it NOT unethical....It is the AMERICAN WAY...

...buy low....sell high.

And if he buys kits from *** then sells them....then *** is his distrobuter weather Len likes it or not.

PACE keep it clean - peeps

Once you click the button to take that picture, it becomes copyrighted and stays copyrighted until you die, plus some. If you upload a picture without a copyright notice on it, it will stay copyrighted by you as long as the website you posted to, is copyrighted itself.

Ok now I try to not get involved with these kind of threads and call it a hunch but I feel it may be closed shortly but I want to express my opinion.

I understand it may be upsetting to you (TEAM_***) that someone other than *** is selling the kits online and yes they may not be a true bonefied distributor(even though *** is distributing the product to the party that purchased it), however ECAP is right that if I, or a company for that matter wants to buy a product and then resell that same product for even a profit of $1 it is my right to do so whether you or anyone else likes it or not. The bottomline is they (***) sells the kit for X amount of dollars to ImportStylez or any other customer. They (ImportStylez) then sells it to someone and makes a profit. Its the economic system. But they still went further to correct the problem you pointed out by directing me to contact *** directly as you can see in the email the sent to me. Either way *** doesn't lose money and if you look on the flipside they are actually getting free advertising. :thumbs:

As for the pictures I do not agree with using someone's pics without expressed permission, and I know you guys have emailed them and they are still there but if you notice the home page says "Thank you for previewing/downloading this WEBSITE PREVIEW LAYOUT designed by RageMedia.net." Have you ever thought maybe, just maybe the people who designed the site(Rage), not ImportStylez (Customer), hasn't gotten around to removing them? If its still there in a week then raise a stink. Its like getting pulled over by a cop for your tint and him telling you to take it off then following you to your house and giving you another ticket for still having it on.....things do sometimes take time.


....steps off podium.


JD

I see your point of view, and im not arguing his fact on that...

I will not have my car affilitated with any site that is used for solicitation purposes. UNLESS, the owner of the site contacts me and asks via email.

Or in this case I am trying to get a deal on my Thermal Exhaust for my Integra:D

Then this guy can use my pic all he wants.

If he got the pic from cardomain, it has my email addy, if he got it here my email addy is around.

Just email ask and it's yours.

Right now APOC is the only site who can use my pics for sales.

I AM SO SICK AND TIRED OF "this site" AND "your own" BS!!!:rage:
We are all here for one reason, we are car enthusiasts that like Grand Am's, PERIOD! Heck I don't even own the car anymore and I still come around because I like the people here and I like the GA's. If you aren't happy here and the people annoy you so much then leave and go to *** Central.......no one is making you to stay.

Chris you start a thread badmouthing a company that you really know nothing about, say that they are a "a fraudulant company" and bad mouthing business practices "Which means he purchases the kit at the discounted price, marks them up and just orders them and has them shipped to your home straight from the distributor. This is a real stupid way to run your business." This can be considered slander by some and in my eyes this is an inappropriate way to handle things and could have been worded very differently. You set out from the begining to tarnish this site and that my friend is wrong. You may not agree with the business practice but call it a hunch but I'd say its a pretty common practice to purchase something for one price then sell it for another. :rolleyes: Correct me if I am wrong but isn't this the process most american businesses run? A car dealer buys a car for a price ups the price to sell it to a consumer............

you know what i heard "Blah blah blah Im a dirty tramp" Please. I am at aedcentral, I am at Gmpowertalk, I am at GAGT.com, I am at gaownersclub, I am at gmperformancetuning, I am at N-body, I have an opinion on the site and am entitled to it. If you dont like the thread. Dont read it.

:rolleyes: :confused:

I mean they jsut keep deleting my threads. SO just delete the whole post. Why not. This place is no better than the next. All delete happy. Dah Oh well no biggie.wtf

Tarnish this site. you guys did that. I did nothing. I never came on here and started threads stating anything even remotly close to "GAGT sucks" or anything like that. If you got that, thats your problem. You take things way to seriosuly. Slow down before you have a heart attack. Trust me I dont take you that serious. SO just chill out. If I get banned so be it. But it be for stupid reasons. But whatever. :wave: wtf

Thanks for pointing out the info about that site using some member's photos without their permission...