“There’s a sucker born every minute.” – Unknown
Honestly, I should have known better. That’s about the best way to start this off. There I was, sitting in the bathroom one morning, doing my business, and looking at Instagram. It’s usually that or Facebook at that time of the morning, something to do while nature takes its course. An ad caught my eye. A portable heater at a ridiculously (well, sorta) low price, offering features too good to be true. Of course, stupid me, vulnerable me, needing something of that sort to use in the basement, or in the garage during the winter, fell for the hype instead of doing my due diligence, reading the fine print and so on. Fantastical claims there were. 1500 watts of power! Comes with a wireless thermostat! Buy 2 get 1 free! All designed to lull you into a false sense of security, promising things that might be true, but since this is the Internet, it’s rather unlikely. Made in the USA, ships from our warehouses in America…. it went on and on. And I fell for it.
After ordering it at the beginning of December, I actually forgot about it for a couple of weeks, because life happens, the Christmas season, my wife had surgery, and all these other things took precedence in my mind. But once the hulabaloo passed, I got a message 3 weeks later saying my items were shipping. Um, what? They should have shipped weeks ago. I thought they were coming from warehouses in this country. Yep, no…they were coming from…(wait for it)…China. Cue the wa-wa music. I looked up the original ad (it’s still online) and took a little harder look at what it was saying.
It’s right there if you look hard enough. Or don’t get swayed by the hype. The people running this scam are using someone else’s artwork, and another (legitimate) business’s product to advertise; however, they manage to shield themselves from having to give refunds or take back their wares by stating that (yep, you guessed it) All Sales Are Final. End of story. If you want to try to contact them (good luck there), you have to use email. We don’t have a phone number you can call, so we can happily ignore your threats and sour grapes.
Over the last couple of days I’ve been following the tracking, and it stated over the past weekend that it had finally cleared customs. And was delivered to a location in NYC, where my shipping label was tacked on and deposited in the US Mail system. And this morning it was delivered to my door. Not the three fans I’d been sold, but just 2. Which, I guess, in hindsight, was just as well. The product I received looks nothing like what I saw. The basic shape is there, but the innards are not what I was paying for. Instead of a high-powered fan, it looks like a repurposed computer exhaust fan. Unlike a product labeled as approved by an organization that claims it’s safe to use, there’s nothing like that on this. No wireless thermostat, the color is red, not orange, and about the only thing that might be somewhat correct is the metal holder for the fan body. Once I had a look at it more critically, I started looking online to see what the original one was supposed to do, the one they had co-opted the pictures and features from.
Suffice it to say the Vevor company does exist, and they’re legitimate. But this style of fan is not just sold by them, it’s a design that’s pretty wildly available in other places by other manufacturers. Unless it’s one of those things that are made by just one company and they slap on a label from a lot of different companies so it can be sold far and wide to as many people as possible. Which does seem to be the case. And I got sucked in by a company that’s selling cheap knock-offs from factories in China.
At this point, I’m rather skeptical about even plugging it in. I went to YouTube and looked up the ad to see if there were any complaints from others, and, hooboy, there are a LOT of them. I guess you could say I was among the fortunate ones in that I actually got the product (well, the ones I paid for), others are still waiting for tracking numbers, and when they attempt to email the company, they get …crickets. Which is kind of what you expect from that sort of company: if they have just one method of communication, they’re probably not going to monitor it much. Much more interested in counting the money.
Buyer beware. There’s a sucker born every minute. Especially when you don’t do your due diligence. Lesson learned. I think.
Sadly some lessons come with a price. And there isn’t a refund in sight. But you can take it with a grain of salt, pay attention to the lesson it taught you and move forward being more cognizant of future purchases. Sorry this happen to you. Hope your next adventure into future purchases is a better one.
Very true. The era of the Internet makes these ‘fly by night’ businesses all too easy to come into being, fleece their flock, and then disappear with their riches, all too ready to do it again several months later. Just have to remember the old adage about if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Thanks.