Leadyle Rotaing Bookcase Tracking Scam - How Does This Work?

fallen121

Ok so I admit I was foolish enough to fall for the Facebook ad that promised a 6 shelf self assembly rotating bookcase for £24 + £7 P&P. And to begin with everything seemed fine. I paid by credit card, I was given an order confirmation and tracking for the shipment. The company, according to the order form was based in London and would be shipping from London. The credit card receipt showed a company based in London. Everything seemed above board.

Alarm bells began to ring when I tried tracking the shipment. For one thing it was coming from China. Not a huge issue as loads of companies do source products from China. And the tracking updated regularly every day, showing the package moving from a warehouse in China to another Warehouse, then to Hong Kong, eventually two weeks later, arriving in London. It was at that point alarm bells began to ring. Have cleared Customs in London, it then seemed to arrive in my home town, where for over a week it moved randomly from warehouse to warehouse, always in transit, but never to my house. Then yesterday, I was informed it was out for delivery. I remained at home, saw the postman who delivered some letters and the Parcelforce guy who delivered a parcel, and several couriers who dropped off Amazon and BooHoo parcels for my daughter. But no bookcase.

Then at 8.45 my phone pinged. Your bookcase has been delivered. I hurried to the door. No van in the street, no card, no package. No item left at the front door, round the back of the house, in the safeplace, behind the bins. Nothing. I consulted with neighbours each side and over the road. I walked up to the same numbered house in a similarly named street on the same address. Nothing. I hadn't been out. My neighbours who have a clear view of the street confirmed the road had been quiet for over an hour. If this parcel was delivered, the delivery guy was stealthy and on foot. And it wasn't any of the regular guys.

So I started emailing. Which was when I noticed none of the email addresses matched the name of the company. Who are "westarshop.com?". And on the Facebook page, bizarre images from the American Store Bed Bath and Beyond, who I am sure have no association with this company. And numerous messages from people asking "Where is my bookcase/". And the same on Trustpilot. And others saying they had ordered a bookcase and received a pair of sunglasses instead. Scam? Probably.

I've raised a chargeback with the credit card company. Who are experiencing a "huge backlog" apparently. And I've had a reply from "customer services" at Leadyle using yet ANOTHER email "after-sales@uprofficial.com" saying,

"We checked,your order has been delivered successfully. Please enter your tracking number:AG225767859CN
Here: https://t.17track.net/en to confirm your order.
We are so sorry to hear that you do not receive it.
In this case, could you please check your mailbox or go to the post office to check it.
Any feedback, please contact us anytime.

Tracking says delivered, so that's it, apparently. But there's no photo, no signature and no evidence that anything was ever delivered. And the weird tracking that doesn't seem to be Royal Mail or any delivery company I recognise and weird non specific references to location. I just get the impression the whole tracking business is a huge scam to prevent chargebacks by claiming the item was delivered. When I'm not convinced that anything ever left the warehouse. There's no proof of who carried this and Royal Mail and certainly not going to be delivering twice in one day at 9pm at night. 

HOW DOES THIS TRACKING SCAM WORK and how do I convince my Credit Card Company to take this seriously? Is this a chargeback or is this some kind of Fraud?

screech_78

I doubt a chargeback will work if the tracking shows as delivered. 

Unfortunately, you might need to put this one down to experience. 

Edited to add: it’s not fraud, you willingly made payment to them. 

born_again

Fraud is when unknown 3rd party uses your card.
You could try a chargeback as they may not realise they can dispute. But if they do not they could chase via other methods.
But be prepared for them to reject in 45 days with proof of delivery.
Would be interesting to know exactly where it was delivered too.

Brie

Have cleared Customs in London

I hope you don't also get a charge from customs for importing something.  

fallen121

My postcode features prominently in the tracking so if it was delivered elsewhere then I have no idea WHERE. And why did it wander around in my town for over a week? Where are these warehouses it supposedly arrived at and left. Who did they belong to? China Post is not a carrier I recognise. No courier company has that many warehouses in a single town. Never did the tracking ever say who was carrying it or where it actually was.

So if a company never actually have any items to sell but just take money off people over and over en masse but nobody actually gets anything what's that called? When you pretend to be an American high street store when you're just a warehouse based in China what's that called? Yes, I gave them money willingly based on my belief that they were a UK company which they claimed to be. That they would be shipping from London. None of these things turned out to be true. Scam yes. Impersonation yes. But the tracking is also fake and is being used to retain the money I gave them. If the tracking was real someone would have knocked on my door, left a card, put a package somewhere, driven up my street, left it with a neighbour, taken a photo of it outside someone else's house, asked someone for a signature. None of those things happened. 

I have raised a chargeback already but don't have high hopes due to tracking. But I think the tracking was FAKED and that this kind of scam is going to become more common. Think about it. You can put a tracking number on anything, even an envelope. Although in my case I never even got that. One lady got sunglasses.

Without a signature or a photo there is just this number from an unknown delivery company being scanned over and over again. Surely anybody could fake tracking like this? There is no proof that this item ever actually passed through HM Customs or the Royal Mail. But there's absolutely no way to ratify this.

In a way I would almost be glad to receive a bill from Customs. But how are they going to charge me for a phantom package that no-one has ever seen? And when am I going to find someone who has actually received one of these bookcases?

user1977

fallen121 said:

HOW DOES THIS TRACKING SCAM WORK 

By setting up a website which looks like it might be providing genuine tracking information but is actually just spitting out stuff from the fraudsters, and then hoping your gullible customers might believe it for a while?

Have you ever heard of "17track.net" before? Well, quite.

Bradden

user1977 said:

fallen121 said:

HOW DOES THIS TRACKING SCAM WORK 

Have you ever heard of "17track.net" before? Well, quite.

I just wanted to say it's a regular tracking site.. I've been buying from China for years and it's not unusual...the tracking can be a bit confusing though.

gollum007

Looking at that tracking, I'd suspect its still enroute, and *something* will arrive.
It's definitely a valid China ems e-Packet tracking number.
(Whether it's going to be what you expect is another kettle of fish entirely- I don't give especially good odds on that..)

TLDR:
Most of the Chinese shippers send in a bulk container.
This then makes its way to a regional center, where packages are re-labelled for local delivery, which looks to me to be your delivered scan.
Multiple delivered scans aren't unusual for this sort of thing.
If I'm guessing it'll be Hermes in a few days.

Ditzy_Mitzy

screech_78 said:

I doubt a chargeback will work if the tracking shows as delivered. 

Unfortunately, you might need to put this one down to experience. 

Edited to add: it’s not fraud, you willingly made payment to them. 

Not quite, an offence under the Fraud Act can be committed in the event of the victim willingly making payment.  I agree with the rest, however; there don't seem to be any reasonable avenues for pursuing a refund.

PHK

That's an actual China Post tracking number. It doesn't provide a signature though and often Delivered just means that it's been handed to the delivering driver/postman.

RefluentBeans

As others have said - it’s a legit tracking number from China Post. China Post is the service in China and is sort of like USPS - in the fact it offers international shipping. 

The way international shipping works though is that you tend to get the parcel to the destination country yourself (or if smaller, via another larger international shipping company who you just share the plane/boat space with) and then when in country it’s often handed to another provider. At this point it depends on what information the sender has given to the courier company. Some may email you with tracking details. Some may not. Given it’s nearly a month since postage I would expect that the sender used the cheapest option and guessing that you may not get a trackable link, and it’ll just turn up in the next few days. There’s a reason many companies say to allow for up to 45 business days for international parcels to turn up - it’s generally a slow and murky process. 

I would ignore the references to your local town / that may be ‘filler’ text from mismatched systems. On 14/7/23 - It says your town when still at LON distribution centre - that’s the London distribution centre. 

The other scans are likely arriving and departing various regional centres, or even just scanning a container of parcels and moving from one area of the warehouse to another. I don’t know exactly, but I know that no delivery company starts their delivery route at 18:53 when it says it was out for delivery. They likely just have given it to the final carrier at that point. L