Oh dear, that's a serious accusation. Riposte, Gdonehue?
I have set up a separate account as this way I could never be accused of plugging my employer without ALSO taking responsibility or being clear and open about it. It also allows me to continue to answer as my alter ego - gdonehue - the one that runs bike teams and hates shaving his legs...
I have heard this accusation plenty of times and it goes along with the stories of where we have sourced the product from. In the scenario PDogg has described the car was stolen or involved in a crash - the products we are selling are neither and come from the exact same factory as the standard item. If the manufacturers who made the most noise about it really wanted the practice to cease, they could have done so to us and the 10 or so other sites who also do this some time ago.
I won't hide from the fact, that in the past a number of the products did not come via the most direct routes to us, but I am unaware of any identification removal. I also know that what has happened in the past has made some enemies, and we are trying to address this and work towards a more mutually beneficial method of operation.
Torpedo7 has moved a long way in a short period of time and certainly one of the key areas we have moved towards is obtaining sole distribution for the products we sell as the main means to reducing the pricing. We will continue to expand in this area and will hopefully reach the point where we have around 70% of our product in this category and the remainder based around solid relationships with distributors where we are still able to offer a better price - but one based on simply our own internal costs. We have just signed off a deal on this with Shimano, and hope that this will be the first of a few.