Venting - ripped off but it was my own fault...

chubsta

Feel really annoyed with myself because I consider myself really savvy when it comes to buying stuff online as have been doing so since 1998 and never once had a problem!

Anyway, my dad, who is almost 90 wanted a pair of driving glasses which reduce glare from new, powerful headlights. He sent me an email with a link to a specific pair, £50 - he had seen them recommended online on one of those 'Top Ten whatever whatever' websites. Unfortunately, I was under massive amounts of stress and pressure at the time so just went ahead and ordered them without doing any checking.

It was a couple of days later when I had some time I was browsing for some different items and thought I would see what the price of similar glasses would have been on Aliexpress and found the exact same glasses available, delivered to the UK for under 4 quid!

As you can imagine I was a little annoyed - I am on this site because I don't want to waste money and I was just so annoyed with myself for not checking before ordering, I price-compare pretty much everything I ever buy and on the one occasion I didn't I am down £46. I mentioned it to my dad as I needed him to understand that those 'top ten' websites are not to be trusted and are effectively just advertising in a manner to deceive you into thinking they are like 'Which' and totally impartial, so he then felt really bad for sending me the link to buy them, even though the original website did look very professional and he couldn't be blamed for falling for it.

In the end the glasses did arrive - from China - but much longer than Aliexpress would have taken, so I wasn't 'scammed' as such, I got the product I paid for, and it was a price I would have obviously been willing to pay, but it wasn't exactly value for money. He says they do work though so that's a bonus.

So, I have vented and got it off my chest and I suppose it is a fairly cheap reminder to stop and think before buying anything online - it is very easy to get blasé as it is so simple to buy anything you want without any real thought.

prowla

It takes a while to twig that it's cheaper to cut out the middle-man in a lot of purchases these days and just go to aliexpress.

chubsta

prowla said:

It takes a while to twig that it's cheaper to cut out the middle-man in a lot of purchases these days and just go to aliexpress.

What makes it worst of all is that I buy loads from Aliexpress, it has replaced eBay for me (most stuff there seems drop shipped from China anyway) and only get stuff from Amazon that I need the next day.

One single lapse and it still bothers me now, weeks later!

savergrant

I was reading this thinking it was a DIY thread.