You Can’t Buy a Thermapen on Amazon

(Or, Why You Can’t Buy a Thermapen on Amazon)

You may have noticed there is a new header banner on the ThermoWorks website saying something about a “warning” (see above).

We admit that it’s a pretty drastic step to add a banner at the very top of our homepage and wanted to take a moment to explain why we feel compelled to warn you!

The short answer is that we care about our customers and worry that you will fall victim to what we consider to be predatory practices on some very popular reseller websites involving ThermoWorks products. We certainly feel that we have been victimized and we regularly get calls from unsuspecting customers complaining about how they feel they have been mistreated on these sites and asking us why we didn’t warn them.

One of the easiest ways to grasp the scope of the problem is to perform a basic search for a “Thermapen” on Google.com…

The first ad is from us but note the second ad from Amazon, apparently promising “up to 50%” savings on Thermapens. If you click that ad, here’s what you’ll see…

Amazon Thermapen Imitations

We’ve blurred the images and names of some of the copycat products shown there (numbers 1 and 2 above), but while they are cheaper than Thermapens, they are most decidedly NOT Thermapens. These are only the first two. The page is filled with other cheap imitations.

Not only that, but the only genuine Thermapen on the page (the red Classic Thermapen shown as number 3 above) is selling for more than $100 MORE than the most you would ever pay for a Classic Thermapen at ThermoWorks.com, where full MSRP is only $79.00, not $179.99. Why is it priced so high? Because someone out to turn a dollar at your expense bought it at retail and marked it up on Amazon, hoping you would automatically believe that Amazon always has the lowest prices. It’s a twisted business model that Amazon facilitates.

The truth is that we love Amazon as consumers just like everyone else. We have shopped there many times in the past for its convenience. But buying Google ads against our trademark protected brand names, promising “up to 50%” off, and then serving up knock-off products and drastically inflated pricing on ThermoWorks products is “bait and switch” dishonesty.

We have seen similar practices at the other sites listed in our warning. None of them are authorized resellers of ThermoWorks product and none of them can offer products that carry our 2-year warranty for technical service, repair, or replacement if something goes wrong.

We have seen prices up to four times our own pricing on a whole range of our products at Amazon, including Thermapen Mk4s, ThermoPops, ChefAlarms, ThermaQs, and more. We have noticed similar schemes at other reseller sites like Ebay, Sears.com, and Walmart.com.

We have complained to these companies and to Google repeatedly to no avail.

We have even heard multiple reports that unscrupulous resellers on these and other platforms are fulfilling over-priced orders with used, stolen, Open-Box, and counterfeit ThermoWorks products. Remember, just because it has our logo on it does NOT mean it is a new or authentic ThermoWorks product. We cannot vouch for the quality of products sold by unauthorized resellers, therefore, we cannot provide warranty or technical support on any products sold by unauthorized resellers.

We noticed that other respected manufacturers like Rode and Klipsch posted reseller warnings on their websites and we decided to take similar action.

We DO have carefully selected, authorized resellers. But despite what some people may want to think about how you get deals on quality products online, the lowest internet prices for ThermoWorks products really are available right here at ThermoWorks.com and through special offers received by subscribers to ThermoWorks emails.

Not only that, we invest a great deal to provide you with quality customer service and technical support on all of our products. We employ teams of product and customer service experts right here at our headquarters in Utah that answer the phone when you call and reply directly to your emails. Our reputation for customer support is second to none. That is why we care so deeply about the kind of experience you might have buying our product in a less than ideal manner.

We cannot prevent people from trying to resell our quality products at higher prices or from making and offering low quality copy-cat products. But we can do our best to inform the public about their choices. And we will continue to pursue the legal recourses available to us for what we consider to be predatory practices on otherwise upstanding platforms.

If you have any questions, we’d like to hear from you. Please comment below and we will do our best to answer. Or, as always, you can call 801.756.7705 during regular business hours. You can ask for Chris J., Tom F., or Tim.

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