If you spend any time at all on Instagram or Facebook, you’ll have noticed slick video product ads for products. If you’ve clicked to buy them, you might have noticed that the websites they take you to don’t look super professional. That’s because there’s a new social media shopping scam in town.
The scam:
Unethical Chinese companies are setting up websites listing loads of products and advertising them on social media. Except when you buy the product, they send you a box of garbage. Literally.
They make money because most people don’t remember that they didn’t get the product, or they will be too busy or lazy to bother with doing a return or filing a credit card dispute.
I learned this the hard way when I sent a link I got from an Instagram ad to a bunch of friends and we all ordered self-scooping cat litter boxes that never arrived (instead, we all ended up with boxes of trash from China.) Turns out the video and images of the product were stolen from Kickstarter.
The enablers:
Why doesn’t Instagram and Facebook do anything about this? The same reason they don’t police political ads. For one, they’re making a lot of money on the ads. For two, it would cost a lot of money to staff a department dedicated to figuring out which ads are legit versus fake, and the Chinese scammers can create new websites and ads as fast as social would remove them.
PayPal is a bad-guy in all this too. In what I can only assume is a way to help scammers so they get to keep their commission, PayPal requires you to go to the post office and ship the garbage back to China on your own dime to get a refund.
Here’s how you can avoid getting scammed:
Search for the product on Amazon and/or reverse image search using right-click –> ‘search Google for image’. If you can find it, then order it on Amazon (where it’s usually cheaper anyway). For products that you can’t find on an online store like Amazon (one you know for sure is legit), then realize it’s a scam and don’t buy it. Or do, and just know that you’re most likely just going to donate money to a scammer.
How to get your money back if you got scammed:
Firstly, when making a purchase online always pay via credit card, but only if you can verify that the checkout page is secure and a legit payment processor (if you can’t, that’s a bad sign!) or use credit card with PayPal as the intermediary.
If you don’t get what you ordered, then file a dispute with PayPal, who will tell you to return whatever you were sent at your own expense. This is when you can ignore PayPal and call to your credit card and tell them that you want to initiate a dispute. They’ll ask if you tried to resolve it first with the merchant, and you can tell them that PayPal will only refund you if you spend more money and time to return the box of garbage the seller mailed you. Since you didn’t receive what you paid for, your credit card company should refund you without asking you to return anything. NB: PayPal’s dispute process takes several weeks, then the credit card dispute will take several more weeks to go through this whole process.
More online shopping scams to be aware of:
This video will show you a few more Instagram and Facebook ad scams to watch out for:
A while back, I went to a Gilt event, where Zac Posen had designed a car (apparently, silver is the new cool color for cars). I was standing near him and the pro photographer asked if he could take a photo of us together. I said “No way”, of course — JK! Anyhow, Zac and I chatted for a few minutes (he seemed very down to earth and approachable) before the orchestrators at Gilt decided to open the proverbial barn doors and let everyone stampede into the sale area.
Now, you’d expect a Gilt sale to be super amazing, right? I’d imagined racks of designer clothing, in perfect shape, at rock-bottom prices. But no, actually. Most of the items looked like they’d been stuffed in someone’s closet for a year, and they were clearly returns or items that didn’t sell. There was pretty much one of each item, sooooo hope it fits! Beyond that, the items weren’t any cheaper (as far as I could tell, anyway) than their mildly discounted web sales.
The way most discount or flash sale websites work is this: they take an item, change the name so you can’t Google it, and sell it for around what you’d get it for elsewhere (if not more). They flat-out lie about the “original/retail price” then they tack on the extra bonuses of expensive and slow shipping and a final-sale no-return policy. Nice.
One Kings Lane
One Kings Lane hides the fact that they’re selling products for more than retail. They artificially inflate the “retail” price (like, way high) and charge more than retail, all the while pretending it’s on some sort of hugely discounted sale. Oh, and they deliberately rename all the products so it’s hard to find them (and realize that they’re cheaper) on Google.
Like the white lamp above? I first saw it for $169 plus expensive and slow shipping and tax on OneKingsLane, and loved it, but I ended up buying it for $79 all-in at Walmart (it was also $79 at Overstock.)
Here’s another example: Their “Houston End Table” was on “sale” at One Kings Lane for $329 +$32 shipping ($361.) Yet I managed to find the exact same table (sold on about ten different websites, at the time) and, at the time of the One Kings Lane sale, the normal retail price was $287 with free shipping, which is $74 cheaper than the supposedly discounted price at One Kings Lane.
Oh yeah, and unlike these daily deal sites (aside from Joss & Main, which actually has some good deals and allows returns), the majority of regular online stores give you the option to return the product if you don’t like it for some reason.
Wondering if the product you’re drooling over is available on other sites? The fastest way to find out is to right-click the image and select “Search Google for this image”. Happy shopping!
On the web: $89.95 and free 2nd day delivery — on One Kings Lane: $99 + $9.95 for shipping (=$20 more), and it’ll arrive in (get this) literally a MONTH!
Gilt
I think the image below pretty much sums it up. Oh, and Amazon has free and fast shipping, while Gilt’s shipping is $$$ and super slow, which brings the price to more than a 50% markup. Same kind of ripoff as One Kings Lane.
Update:
I got an email from GILT’s PR / media relations, who wanted us to change this article, since I outed them for their dishonest practices. This was the rationalization:
“The ‘retail/original’ price listed on GILT’s sales of all products on our site reflects the price reported by the manufacturer and may not always represent the prevailing price for retailers or department stores on every day or in every community. For international sales, the Full Retail Price is based on what such items would be sold at in the US market or in the worldwide online market, plus taxes, shipping and additional international surcharges, if applicable.”
So it sounds like they basically figure out how they can make it sound the highest, between what the manufacturer says, the highest price it’s selling for anywhere, and what other charges they can add to the “retail” price like tax, duty, and shipping that some customers may have had to pay depending on where they would have bought it and then shipped it. Not exact transparent…
I personally think that strategy is very misleading at best, and I replied and said that the only price that people care about is the item’s current price at other stores — not the absolute maximum price it has historically sold for anywhere, including duty and tax, etc!
As a side note, I tried to find retailers selling Gilt products for as high as the price they listed as the non-sale price, and I couldn’t. Soooo…
Share below: What experiences with online shopping have you had?
Read more: My best online shopping tips & hacks to get great deals
I’ve noticed this myself, particularly on electric products. Best to stick with authentic named brands….
I have been contacted by Chinese sellers wanting to give me stuff in return for reviews. I said No to one. I told another that my positive review should be enough for him. One very active reviewer wrote about what they did to him, in his review. It was very telling. But I am a semanticist and can read between the lines. Be wary of extremely short reviews that provide no clue about the writer’s origin. I will look for an unusual percentage of such extremely short reviews, to discount the product rating. That’s the thing about China. Apparently they hate English. You can tell by their writing or their lack of writing.
Yes. i dont buy the TOP item i always have 4 tabs open and i browse each item features, prices, and location
It’s not only Chinese sites that scam us. They’re everywhere. 90% of times, when buying from even American sites, I just care from where the product is shipped. Reviews are useless… Americans always seek third-party validations for their choices…
Ironic because the same people are here making FAKE reports of this being inaccurate when all us know this is true. Start flagging the bad Chinese products and fake reviews on Amazon.
You should do a check into the shipping companies tied to this & their “vat ” fraud. Like masses of goods being shipped from China into Turkey… to be shipped BACK to Asia
Once I thought I have a wide choice of projectors from different brands on amazon. Then I realised that all those projectors are completely identical, produced by the same Chinese manufacturer. They just have some minor cosmetic differences and different artificial brands attached to them. I don’t want to buy anything from someone who wants to deceive me.
I’m more worried about the counterfeit products being sold on Amazon. So far I have purchased both shoes and perfume which were fake/replica.
I’m done with Asian sites!!!! Products have 5 ? reviews, but when I get the item – it looks completely different from the picture advertised! And the worst part is – they use returns against you!!! They have horrible customer service. They treated me like it was my fault that I received a defective product!
Anytime I’ve wanted a return/refund I’ve always gotten it immediately, no questions asked. Sometimes I’m told to just keep the product because it’s not worth shipping back.
Right, i hate it. Some products are the exact same product but sold by another company who finds the manufacturer and just puts their own logo on it.
Why are we dissing China? We gave our rights to our politicians, big biz, big Farma and big Pharma when they took manufacturing & outsource it overseas. Saying that we complain too much about “long” hours and “low” wages, so the jobs naturally went to others who want it. It’s just a bag to most of us. We don’t want a $4000 bag and who cares? 95% of us are not in those snotty circles anyway. Likely, we make the bags. or drive the truck, or make the thread or the skinned beef after we ate her. LOL
I lived with a Chinese citizen for several months and we talked extensively about the rise of China’s rise. They collectively don’t have the same ethics most of us do. She personally paid people to smuggle iPhones to China. She says it’s common for people in factories to take a few high end sunglasses off a run and sell them. I’m telling you. It’s game on in China.
Something people are saying is very true. But also there are many rumors. Fo example, NOT every Chinese knows Kung-fu. not every Indian girl dances Bollywood.”collectively” is big word but if you talk about smuggling iphones to China, many people are doing that in Shenzhen/Hongkong area. There might be some little thefts from OEM factories but the management would not allow it to happen if they knew it. And they never spare in hiring security system, thats necessary to be an OEM manufacturer. Also it is true there are underground factories making fake LV hermes purses and sell them to all over the world. in China the “Ethics” in economic life is not the same as in the other countries and that might be true. Its about the education and regulations. Just want to say that the Scammers or smugglers are not real businessmen and they exist mostly in their own circles. Most businessmen are working very hard to keep their business alive. Most people in the USA enjoy life with products made in China for decades. Shouldnt we give the credit to the real Chinese businessmen.
I wouldn’t say we enjoy life with Chinese products. Made in China does not have a positive view here. They are seen as cheap, low quality products.
You should really look into the ongoing speculation from thousands of online retail businesses, who buy really cheap fake products on Aliexpress/Alibaba etc, brand and resell it on Ebay and Amazon. Their level of automation is extreme. They heavily promote this scheme as a fast way of doing money. Advertising apps/algorithms and database software through which you reduce number of transactions, practically buying cheap products, branding and reselling without having to even check the product. You see these kind of ads everywhere on Facebook, Instagram or any social media platform out there. It’s a disease really!