Reseller Terms & Conditions
Smokey Mountain Chew, Inc. (SMC) strives to ensure our customers can enjoy our products without fear of mishandling or spoliation. Our long-cut, non-caffeinated and caffeinated pouches are intended and designed for sale only through Smokey Mountain Chew, Inc and our authorized third-party distributors and sellers
Our Reseller Policy strictly prohibits the distribution or sale of SMC products by unauthorized resellers. Unauthorized resale, even of seemingly genuine products, harms customers and SMC. This Policy is intended to inform consumers and resellers and explains the steps we take to deter unauthorized resellers before resorting to legal action.
Why are Authorized Partners important?
Authorized Partners are businesses we trust. They are authorized by contracts with us to help make our products available in the marketplace. Authorized Partners must meet specific storage, safety, and hygiene requirements. We use site visits, customer feedback, and other measures to meet these requirements.
When sold by an Authorized Partner, SMC products stay within our distribution chain. Maintaining our distribution chain helps us ensure product authenticity, ingredient integrity, and adherence to hygiene and safety standards. For these reasons, SMC can only offer customer support for purchases from SMC and Authorized Partners.
What’s the problem with unauthorized resellers?
An “unauthorized reseller” is anyone selling products labeled as SMC products outside our website or our Authorized Partner channels. SMC has no way to ensure unauthorized resellers will not, among other things:
- relabel and/or reseal other products as SMC products and/or in SMC packaging,
- adulterate or dilute genuine SMC products,
- resell genuine SMC products that have been improperly stored or handled (such as by exposure to extended periods of freezing or high temperatures or UV light),
- resell genuine SMC products months or years after the date when an Authorized Reseller would no longer be permitted to sell them for quality, freshness, or other reasons.
In many cases, unauthorized resellers do not know whether the products they resell fall into the foregoing categories.
Unauthorized resellers harm our mission and brand by compromising our ability to ensure that products with the SMC name have been manufactured, shipped, stored, and sold in accordance with our stringent integrity requirements. Our marketplace monitoring shows that sales of unauthorized products routinely generate disproportionate customer support inquiries and poorer customer feedback. This damages our brand’s reputation for quality, integrity, and satisfaction.
How do we combat unauthorized resellers
Unauthorized resellers do not have our consent to sell merchandise labeled as SMC products. This includes anyone who obtains genuine SMC products, even if purchased at a clearance sale, and later resells them on marketplaces like Walmart, eBay, or Amazon.
Unauthorized resellers may not sell SMC products under any circumstances. Any sale or suspected sale of SMC products by an unauthorized reseller will be reported to us and our marketplace integrity partners.
Because many resellers are not aware of the how their activities harm us and our customers, we strive to avoid adversarial language in our initial communications with them. Unauthorized resellers are generally first contacted by one of our marketplace-integrity partners and given the opportunity to immediately cease all sales activity.
However, we reserve the right to take more formal action whenever necessary to defend the integrity of our products and our customers’ satisfaction. This may include the legal action against unauthorized resellers, as well as formal notifications to third parties who enable the unauthorized reseller, like marketplaces (which prohibit inaccurate or misleading information in product pages) and often have policies for imposing financial penalties against and suspension or loss of marketplace access.
To notify us of a suspected unauthorized sale of SMC products, please get in touch with contact@smokeyusa.com
