Fake websites

coolcarma

*Apologies for the long rant coming up*

 If something looks like a real bargain when searching on the internet be warned there is often a catch. Recently whilst googling for greenhouse staging, a site came up, offering some of the things I was looking for, all at a good price. No indication of location of the company but the payment went through and subsequently shown to be based in Beijing. More than the agreed amount was charged, no order confirmation and no means of contact apart from a messaging panel within the site.

 Numerous messages asking to either confirm or cancel the order later, the entire website disappeared. I contacted my credit card company who started a dispute case.

A few days later a card comes through the door for an item which needs to have customs and handling fees paid. No information on where or who it was from. After paying £12 for the customs and handling, a cheap piece of jewellery arrived. I could tell it was from the same company as I had to choose Westmoreland as my county.

 Fast forward to today, my credit card company states they cannot dispute the charge as:
1) I did receive something in the post
2) It was up to me to have evidence of what I had received was not what was ordered
3) The website has now disappeared and there was no means of me getting a screenshot of the order itself to show what I had ordered (no confirmation email was ever sent)
4) I cannot even state goods not received as I had paid for the customs handling charge.

I am so furious as someone had cleverly worked out how to tap into all the loopholes and we are just sitting ducks. Moral of the story? If something looked like a bargain but from a company or site you had never heard of, walk away.

[Deleted User]

 If course you can claim goods not Received because you didnt get the goods you ordered.  

coolcarma

_shel said:

 If course you can claim goods not Received because you didnt get the goods you ordered.  

Unfortunately not as my credit card company says it was up to us to prove the piece of cheap tat that they sent was NOT what I ordered in the first place. With the website gone and no confirmation email, not a chance.

DoaM

What was the website? (There may be an Internet archive copy).
Have you checked to see if you can call up the page offline from your web browser cache?

forgotmyname

One thing I could never fault the early Internet Explorer days,  The history was always there in the correct order you
visited the site/page and easy searchable by date/time/name etc.

Visit the site/page again and you got a 2nd entry with the new page layout if changed, it did not overwrite the original
site/page visit data.

I could go back many months and check a sites info without risking overwriting it.   Do I feel old now...