Merchant rating is a huge part of Internet shopping, and there are third party sites that not only allow you to track what customers think of busineses, but also to find out their affiliations, etc. for socially conscious customers. If you buy camera gear from anywhere but a handful of places like B&H, Amazon, and a few others, you have failed to do basic research and will be ripped of by the too-good-to-be-true deals of Brooklyn Camera. If you buy musical gear from a big name reseller other than Guitar Center or Sam Ash, chances are you got it from one of about 8 big sites, all run by the same company, which happens to be owned something like 35% by Mit Romney (Some may find this objectionable, I consider it a fun fact.)
I don't see why it should be any different for merchants. They don't have the liberty of running background checks on customers, and unless they have gotten a warning like big chain stores send to each other after being ripped off a few times, how can they know that Sir Edwin P. Merriwether III, Esq. who wants to place a large order for the new wing of his estate ran the same scam back when he was
NigerianBanker409@gmail.com?