02/10/2026
🚨 PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: WE ARE NOT CLOSING DOWN, HEATH AND I ARE NOT 94, AND WE ARE DEFINITELY NOT GIVING AWAY THE ENTIRE SHOP 🚨
A lovely older lady came into our store this week because she had seen an advertisement for a jewellery business that was closing down and giving away all its jewellery for free.
She thought it was us because we were the only husband and wife team she knew about in the area.
Now, Heath and I have been working extremely hard for more than 20 years. Between the sleep deprivation, chronic low-level dehydration and the crushing weight of owning a small business, we may occasionally look a little bloody haggard.
But I didn’t realise we had deteriorated to the point that we could be confused with the two approximately 94-year-old, AI-generated retirees pictured in this advertisement.
The website is called Harrison & James.
According to its extremely moving story, this sweet elderly husband-and-wife team has spent 46 years lovingly handcrafting jewellery together and has finally made the heartbreaking decision to retire.
Rather than sell their remaining stock, they’re giving every precious handcrafted piece away for free.
You only pay shipping.
Because apparently after 46 years in business, Harrison and James have forgotten both how money works and that jewellery can be sold.
Naturally, I became curious.
Approximately five minutes and one reverse-image search later, I found the exact same “handcrafted” necklace being sold by 12 different online jewellery businesses.
Apparently this necklace was simultaneously designed and lovingly handcrafted by:
• Harrison and James, a devoted elderly couple
• John and Mary, a devoted elderly husband-and-wife team
• Evelyn and Rose, a devoted mother-and-daughter team
• several other emotional combinations of women, husbands, wives, mothers, daughters, grandmothers, artisans and soon-to-be retirees
• and, presumably, one exhausted child in a factory who would like everyone to stop taking credit for it
Every one of these fictional families has spent decades lovingly making the same necklace. Every one of them is tragically closing down. Every one of them is holding a final sale.
And every one of them is somehow using the exact same supplier product code: DJED5-MB003001.
What are the odds?
Harrison & James claims this “sapphire” necklace was worth $301 before it was generously reduced to $0.
We found the identical mass-produced necklace with the same photos and supplier code being sold elsewhere for US$2.42.
It is not a $301 handcrafted sapphire necklace.
It is a few-dollar piece of mass-produced crap wearing a fake moustache and pretending to have 46 years of jewellery-making experience.
You are not receiving a priceless farewell gift from a devastated family business.
You are buying the necklace through an inflated “shipping” charge, which may or may not ever arrive.
The jewellery is not free. The bu****it story is.
And while this particular advertisement looks like AI generated it after being given the prompt “elderly jewellers retiring, but make them look like they have never held a pair of pliers in their lives,” some of these ghost business shops are significantly more convincing.
AI is now extraordinarily good. The entire websites and all of its imagery is AI generated. The stock images are AI generated. In my other life I build websites for businesses and I could build a website like this from scratch and be up and running accepting payments within a couple of hours using AI.
This would all be hilarious if it weren’t actually harmful.
These scams deliberately prey on people who aren’t confident online, particularly those who weren’t born and bred in the digital age and may not realise just how convincing a completely invented business can now look.
A professional website no longer proves that a business exists.
A photograph no longer proves that a person exists.
A video may not prove that a person exists.
Five thousand five-star reviews do not necessarily prove that five thousand customers exist.
Please talk to the people in your family who may need some help recognising these scams. Don’t make them feel silly or embarrassed. These businesses are deliberately designed to fool people, and the technology behind them is getting better frighteningly quickly.
Show them how to:
• reverse-image-search a product
• search the business name followed by “scam” or “reviews”
• check whether the address is real
• look for an ABN or legitimate business registration
• check whether the phone number actually connects to a real person
• recognise fake countdown clocks, permanent closing sales and suspicious urgency
• stop and ask someone they trust before entering payment details
And please remind them:
If something seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is.
No legitimate jeweller is giving away an entire store full of supposedly $300 jewellery because they’re feeling sentimental. Gold, silver and gemstones do not suddenly become worthless because Doris and Arthur would like to spend more time in the garden.
This s**t also hurts genuine businesses.
Once somebody has been burned online, they quite reasonably become reluctant to buy from any online retailer again. Real businesses with real owners, real staff, real stock and real accountability then have to overcome the distrust created by deplorable behaviour of the dishonest people behind these ghost businesses.
So please: check before you buy. Help your less technologically confident friends and family check before they buy. If you’re unsure, call the business and see whether an actual human answers.
You can certainly call us.
We are real. We are in Bendigo. You can physically walk through our door. We have been here for more than 20 years. We are not AI generated.
And despite what our current level of exhaustion may suggest, neither of us is approaching 100.
Most importantly, we are not giving away the jewellery.
Seriously, be careful and please share this with someone who needs to see it.
Now if you will excuse me, I’m off to get some Botox.
