China News Service, March 15. According to the US "World Journal", online shopping is convenient and fast. Some small shopping websites often have much cheaper prices than large platforms, but many of them are traps.
Recently, a Chinese resident of Southern California in the United States spent $139 to buy two solar panels online, only to receive two stickers.
Fortunately, he used a payment method that protects consumers and made active claims to recover the money, but he still hopes to remind other people to be careful when shopping online.
Mr. Li said that when he searched online some time ago, he wanted to buy solar panels on the roof. Because of the search records, he was usually pushed by big data to advertisements of related products on many platforms.
One day, while browsing social media, an advertisement for solar panels popped up. The description was twice as powerful as the product I had seen before, but the price was only half.
So Mr. Li was tempted to click to enter and link to a shopping website. He bought two pieces for $139 and wanted to try it.
Because it is an unfamiliar website, he also uses the Paypal system to pay for purchases, because it has the function of protecting consumers.
After waiting for more than 20 days after placing the order, there is no news, not even an order number or a courier number.
He tried to contact the seller to no avail, so he filed a complaint on Paypal.
But soon the seller reported to Paypal that the tracking number was already there.
After Mr. Li checked, he really did have a package with this single number, so he thought we'd wait.
Since the seller provided the tracking number, Paypal also decided that the seller was not at fault and closed the complaint.
But soon when Mr. Li looked up the single-numbered package, he found that it was only a 0.1-pound package.
Sure enough, one day he received the package, and when he opened it, there were only two stickers.
Mr. Li was very happy at first, and said that he didn't know who sent it and was going to show it to his children, but he didn't expect that when he checked the courier number, these two stickers were the so-called "solar panels".
Only then did Mr. Li determine that the shopping website was a scam, so he called Paypal again, and after several setbacks, he reopened the closed complaint.
He said the seller knew the Paypal game fairly well and knew how much data and time to provide and Paypal would stop investigating.
So the first time Paypal closed his case, he didn't even know it and thought the money had been refunded.
After opening it again, the seller also offered to refund 60 dollars. Mr. Li angrily said that it was equivalent to 79 dollars to buy two pieces of paper, and he refused angrily.
Fortunately, the courier number became irrefutable proof in the end. After all, it is impossible for the solar panel to be only 0.1 pounds. Paypal judged that Mr. Li was responsible and refunded the full amount to him.
Mr. Li said the address on the website was a company in Xiamen, but the stickers were sent from New Jersey.
There are also a lot of toys, decorations and other small commodities on the website, which are very cheap. It seems that they spent money to advertise on some social platforms. Now, smart advertisements will automatically push relevant advertisements according to consumers’ search records. Therefore, a lot of consumption I am afraid that people will buy it with the mentality of giving it a try.
And they are all cheap little things, and sometimes I forget to buy them.
Mr. Li admits that he has a lot of research on computers, but he almost fell into the online shopping scam. Fortunately, he followed closely. If he was a little lazy, he would have lost the money.
He thought he must not be alone, but the scam was typical, and the other party seemed to be very experienced.
Therefore, he hopes to share his experience with the community to prevent more people from being fooled.
(Li Xue)