Chinese Companies Selling on Facebook *****SCAM ALERT*****

smartbuddy

My wife recently purchase an animatronic shark and an animatronic spider from a Facebook link attached to an impressive video, each item was $29 and purported to be from different Chinese companies. The goods took 4-6 weeks to arrive and bore no relation to the items purchased as you can see from the picture below. The advertisements had gone when we went back to compare. We used PayPal to make the purchase as we believed in their "Purchase Protection" promise. The we complained to PayPal and used their dispute resolution facility each vendor offered us a $5 refund only. We declined and they pointed out that it would cost us more to ship the goods back to them and "would probably get lost in the post" so we would not get a refund anyway and we had paid the return postage. We are now in the position that PayPal system wants us to upload the tracking information within 48 hours or they will close the case. These scammers must be making millions, I know of 2 other people that have fallen foul of this scam. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

soolin

A reminder to watch for these scams is always useful but unfortunately the right people won’t read this. I suspect the only people here reading this will be the ones who are used to seeing these scam posts, China being the give away . Those likely to fall for the scam won’t bother reading this.

Those adverts were everywhere and most carried comments from people laughing at the obvious scam. The puppy one was the obvious one, showed a video of a real dog, and carefully in the background the actual dog was shown as a tiny soft toy.

The only good thing is at least the things were cheap enough . The first lot that came out probably a year or so ago now were over £100 but I suspect they needed to seriously reduce the price just to get victims on the hook.

You could try PayPal again to see if they can do anything as a goodwill gesture. However you bought from a CHinese company and even if it had been a UK company at the moment PayPal require ite to be returned before a claim can be satisfied. However I agree with you, posting things back to the Far East rarely works and they are notorious for never reaching the seller.

Incidentally the baby one that started this was worrying and I did report it to everyone I could think of as There were suggestions that the baby looked highly drugged to make it act so malleable. 

JJ_Egan

Its not only China other scammers use Facebook as they know many will bite .

donnac2558

I play some games on Facebook and you have to watch these ads in between to get points to carry on playing.  I will never ever buy to add to my points etc.   Anyway I could tell straight away they were real puppies eyes blinking is a giveaway.  I have often wondered if people actually think this is what they will get when they buy?

soolin

They are advertising an eagle 'toy' now- videos of it flying over majestic fjords and sweeping over tall mountains, all for less than £30. Composition of said realistic eagle is plastic and metal with realistic silicon body !

Spank

That's my Christmas shopping sorted.

donnac2558

Oh, one I did see was for a micro pig.

Spank

donnac2558 said:

Oh, one I did see was for a micro pig.

Is that a robot or one that eventually becomes bacon & sausages?

kangoora

Scambook + advert - I stopped reading there.

I would never purchase anything being advertised on that platform

forgotmyname

Damn, I appear to be missing all the unique bargains due to not using Facebook.

If there is an advert for a "real live robotic flying spider pig" do let me know where to send my money....

The way people share and like spam/scam links it makes me wonder why people do not like and
share warnings against these scams?

soolin

forgotmyname said:

Damn, I appear to be missing all the unique bargains due to not using Facebook.

If there is an advert for a "real live robotic flying spider pig" do let me know where to send my money....

The way people share and like spam/scam links it makes me wonder why people do not like and
share warnings against these scams?

My unpopular view is that a few people are so gullible they believe that the people doing the warning are wrong, and are missing out on a bargain. I am quite active on various hobby and selling groups on Facebook and have warned of several scams only to be occasionally rebuked by admin that not everything is a scam, and could I please stop putting up warnings as there had been complaints I was somehow keeping all the bargains for myself. I posted several warnings several Christmasses ago about someone Selling fake Michael Kors handbags as pre orders and only taking bank transfers, I almost got banned for that one as apparently the poster was a single mum trying to make ends meet by importing bags , and of course she was genuine, she had photos of her children and everything and of course she needed bank transfers.  She took several thousand pounds before she deactivated her account and disappeared and I think am still on 2 strikes on that group for making malicious claims of scams.