The past few days I have actually spent quite a bit of time on a bit of research. The reason was an advertisement I came across on Facebook (yes sorry, I still have a Facebook account). It was about a fashion store that advertised with the message "We are going to close, after 25 years we can no longer compete with the big shops". I was triggered by the message, I thought it was quite sad if you have to close your business after 25 years because you can't compete with the big shops, but I was also immediately triggered by the number of years that they apparently have been able to sell well, so what made them want to stop now all at once.
Then I clicked on the advertisement (never do that, I am now being thrown through with shops) and I noticed that the site looked very hip, not like a company that has been selling fashion for 25 years. But what also immediately struck me is that I had seen the photo on the welcome page several times, but then on other sites, so I was immediately suspicious.
It was also clear to see that the logos on the shirts of the two people in front of the store were photoshopped in a very bad way. I couldn't help but laugh.
I was curious and looked up the domain name via sidn.nl, this is a Dutch site where you can see when the domain name was registered, by whom and where. There my suspicion was confirmed, this was not a legitimate site. The site was registered at the end of December (so not even a month old). Then I went to trustpilot, a review site, the site was not listed there yet (no reviews yet) while the site itself states that they have 1000+ positive reviews.
Then I started investigating the site a bit further, for example the shipping policy. For example, it says that the shipping time is between 7 and 10 days, which is strange for a package from Amsterdam, which normally takes no more than 1 day.
Then the return policy, which is hidden in it that when you want to return items you have to send them to China and the costs are for the buyer and amount to at least 20 euros. This is a sneaky way to make the threshold high and prevent people from returning the items and leaving it at that.
Snipet of the return policy
I never really paid attention to it but because I clicked on some of those ads Meta (Facebook) adjusted my algorithm and I only got those shops on the screen. So I did some more research (we were at it anyway) and it's really unbelievable how many Dropship sites there are that try to lure you into buying with false information, that's just scamming. I tried to report some of those sites to Facebook with proof and everything but the only thing you get back is that they meet the guidelines. And I get that, Facebook of course also makes a lot of money from these criminal practices, but it's really absurd that this is allowed.
An evening of research gave me the list below with websites that try to scam people via Dropshipping and false information.
I think it is utopian to think that this problem can be tackled, they come up with another domain name and continue happily. The only thing is to create awareness, but how? Of course you can't reach everyone. So ideas are welcome.
Now it won't be something typical that happens in the Netherlands, but the frequency and numbers do worry me, how is that with you?
What I do like is that some antivirus programs also report when the site is fraudulent. I don't know if they all do that, but luckily mine does :)
Have a nice evening,
Peter
