I have always heard of stories of people being conned/scammed/cheated/deceived by a lot of offers, gimmicks, merchants, marketers, salespeople out there, especially online. I have an incident to share about ShopLah which is an online apparels website. ShopLah has been both famously and infamously known in the local online community. Famously known for their huge array of clothes. Infamously known for not delivering what they promised on their site. ShopLah isn’t the only online merchant who is involved in such ‘scandals’. There are many stories that people share about their nasty experiences.
Thus, a lot of people having heard about all these unfortunate incidents, do not think well of online transactions, online purchases and even internet marketing because of the fear of being cheated/ scammed or taken advantage of.
I am thankful that I have not encountered such people in my short internet marketing endeavour but no doubt, there’s always that possibility. But what I found out recently is that, I could have become a victim of an online merchant’s dishonesty earlier this year.
I received the following email from a good friend, warning me about this dishonest merchant. I thought I better share because it concerns the welfare of other online shoppers.
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hi pple,
IF u intend to forward this email to ur fren, pls help me by DELETING my name and email B4 u forward. thanks!!!
i ordered something from them from cny and till now have yet to receive the good. and now is mid-march, 2008.
the story goes:
saw the website a few days to a wk before cny, ordered, but was told that the gd will arrive only about 7 days after cny.i agreed though my intention was to wear that for cny. agreed coz their things look quite nice and i dun want to be blacklisted. and i agreed to pay the deposit, since they have the option to pay deposit. paid about $14 sth. not a lot of money, but still, i dun like to be cheated.
halfway over the cny, i checked with the owner when will the stock arrive, told me that will be arriving”this week”. and “this week” was over, then i emailed them 2 or 3 times, no reply. and i called them yesterday, but no one picked up. then thought of googling it and c what i can find out. and hell! so many bad comments about them!
see: http://www.flowerpod.com.sg/forums/index.php?showtopic=39561&st=0 for example. the new paper even feature one article on the bloody shop, including the bad comments. the article is in page 2 of that website. (this website is a trust-able forum. got 1 person was rather defensive on shoplah, kena disabled post by the moderator, in case u’re wondering about the credibilty of this forum)so, let those around u noe about this cheater shop! DO NOT buy from them.
one lesson learnt! — google about the online shop that u want to patronise before commiting. why din i think of that earlier? nvm.
IF u intend to forward this email to ur fren, pls help me by DELETING my name and email B4 u forward. thanks!!!
rather fed up now. will call until their phone burst.
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Well, I’m always a fan of shopping online for clothes, accessories, gadgets and bags etc because of their affordable prices and huge array. Hence, I’ve been rather hooked on visiting such sites that sell clothes imported by Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand etc. I almost bought from ShopLah just before Chinese New Year too (same period as my friend) but because they couldn’t deliver the goods in time of CNY, I decided to cancel my order of 1 dress and 2 tops. Thank goodness I didn’t pay them a single cent. (Imagine if I had!!)
Apparently there are others including my friend who are not as lucky. For instance, Rachelyn, had an unpleasant experience shopping with ShopLah. There are also other reports including one done by AsiaOne last year about them. Check out more at this forum…
Because of the presence of such dishonest merchants online, it causes people to have the negative impression of other online merchants when in fact, their worries are uncalled for. There are a lot of legitimate and trustworthy merchants online that will deliver their goods and services as promised.
My advice to you all is: Always do a background check of the person/organisation that you are purchasing from. Make sure that he/she is a credible seller with a good online reputation. Just do a google search to find out information about him/her. This simple move might be able to prevent you from incurring any unnecessary losses.
I hope that this real-life experience can increase your awareness about being more about about such dishonest people around online but at the same time, remember that there exists a lot of information online that can give you an idea of how trustworthy the merchant/seller is. 🙂
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