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
A lot of these points can be countered by using common sense. Internet Fraud IS big business.And one can’t be cautious enough!
Good advice, Hilary! Thank you! Another thing I see often is falling lure to the fact that paypal offers “buyer/seller protection”. Don’t ever rely on that for one split second. If you send your money to someone outside the united states thats attempting to scam you, your money is GONE. They’re going to withdraw it from the account faster than a Paypal claim can even be opened. If dealing locally with someone who wants to pay with Paypal, have them gift you the cash. THIS IS THE ONLY WAY I WOULD EVER ACCEPT PAYPAL LOCALLY. By having them gift you the cash, they pay no fees at the cost of automatically waiving any paypal protection so its impossible to open a claim on the money. Anything besides gifting, I wouldn’t accept. Always be wary with accepting Credit/Debit cards since transactions on this can be easily disputed and the burden of proof always falls on the seller.
My golden rule with dealing with anything in life. Internet sales, Local Deals, Women, Literally Anything. IF IT SEEMS TO GOOD TO BE TRUE, CHANCES ARE IT IS. Don’t fall prey to the thousands of scammers out there. Be smart, Safe, and always one step ahead of them.
If it seems to good to be true, it probably is. Don’t accept anything besides cash for craigslist payments, and be aware of the bills given to you. Don’t meet people at midnight who want to buy your rolex. Don’t sell highly desirable items to people with low feedback scores on eBay. Make people gift you money on paypal, if paypal must be used to receive payment. Be smart, and safe!
I saw an ad on my Facebook for a pretty nice projector. It was being sold at a ridiculously low price to the first 50 people who purchased within a certain time frame. I clicked it and saw they take PayPal so knew my purchase would be protected. Even though the deal seemed too good to be true I couldn’t figure out how it was a scam. I stupidly went ahead and purchased the item for $79.99 and paid an extra $10 for expedited shipping.
Fast forward to almost a month later, I had written the seller asking where my projector was since tracking was useless as it was shipping from China- which I wasnt aware of when I placed the order. He never responded. A few days later the package finally arrived and instantly I knew I had been scammed. The box was too small to be the real thing. I opened it to find a cheap mini projector that you can purchase off eBay for $20. I searched online and saw that many others had the same thing happen to them. I immediately opened a case with PayPal and while they are willing to refund me my money I need to send the product back WITH tracking. The cheapest you can send a package to China via regular first class is around $20 but with tracking it jumps to $55! Ups and fedex are about double that. So there lies the problem. A lot of people who fell for the same scam just gave up because spending another $55 minimum to get back $79-89 dollars is just doent make sense. Out of principle I decided to just Pay this shipping.
I feel like paypal is allowing this seller to commit fraud since they are still using a PayPal account. .
What recourse do I have to get back my shipping costs?
Thanks for the advice. Yes I know it was too good to be true and that I am an idiot. I have been shopping online since the days of Netscape and altavista and have been fortunate enough to avoid any other scams. For some stupid reason I thought all sellers on FB were legitimate and that PayPal would completely protect me.
I don’t think you have any recourse to get your shipping costs back, unfortunately.
PayPal offers some protections. You really should familiarize yourself with them if you count on those protections. And FB is not some badge of legitimacy not does it claim to be.
Companies should print the customer’s invoice details in the polybag itself also a barcode of the product ID….this will make difficult for them to steal…Also that piece of paper should be inside the polybag. It’s just my suggestion!!
WICKED EVIL WORLD I AM SPINNING ON,GLAD MY BODY HAS A SHELF LIFE!!!!!PRAISE JESUS!!!!
Incredible stuff! There must be enough people who fall for these things, or the scammers would give up. Thanks for the warnings.
Got a question for you. Have you hear about the TVBUDDY is it real? I think it is toooooooo good to be true
Thanks for the scammer tips. It’s depressing that there’s so many people trying to take advantage of us.