I'm a Chump

[Marita40]

Yup, I was taken and fell hook, line, and sinker. What a chump!
I saw a pair of boots I wanted to buy at a great price on a store website, but they didn't have my size. They were also available at a couple other store sites, but again not in my size! Then I found them in my size! I typed in my shipping information, credit card information, and placed the order immediately in the heat of the moment with a sigh of relief. Done, and I got my dream boots!

Then, a nagging feeling. Looked back at the website--no phone number to contact them. No e-mail with confirmation came. Chinese company with glossy website. I typed in the company name in google and a host of complaints about a sham company who takes your money and never ships the product.

My credit card was immediately charged. I cancelled the card and am disputing the purchase. But I am mainly shamefaced about being played a fool in a moment of sartorial greed.

 

[Lsbcal]

Not a chump at all. You did the right things after the mistake. We all make mistakes, some costing a h*ll of a lot more.

 

[Walt34]

We all make mistakes, some costing a h*ll of a lot more.

Yup, I married the wrong girl in 1978. That cost a lot more than any pair of boots!

 

[egleys]

You did not have to cancel the card. Legally, you do not have to pay for anything you did not receive on a credit card.

 

[Walt34]

It was probably wise to cancel the card. Since it appears that the company is a sham, canceling the card will prevent anyone from making future charges to it. Now she won't have to deal with that too.

 

[sengsational]

Something similar just happened to DW. She ordered directly from some outfit in China. She actually got the product, but it was misrepresented. She paid with PayPal and they said she could get her money back if she returned the product...wait for it...to Uruguay! The postage would have been almost as much as the product.

So it's a cheap lesson learned....order only through places that have a reputation system and only order from those who have a good reputation.

 

[easysurfer]

I felt like a chump not long ago on two transactions. First, I went on a site and tried to make an order but in my haste tried processing but realized the site was not secure (no https padlock). But The transaction didn't even go through probably to bad site design. The other time, once again in haste, I ordered a remote control where after ordering, did some research and saw a host of complaints against the seller the purposely said the remote is no longer made and instead gave a cheap substitute.

 

[MRG]

No you are not! A chump would not have done the actions you did. You took charge of a bad situation, when I w*rked that was called some happy BS words.

 

[splitwdw]

As others have said, you are not a chump. Thanks for the reminder to watch who and where we order items.

 

[MissMolly]

You are not a chump. We've all done things like that after searching and then finally finding what we were looking for.

 

[audreyh1]

It feels like the Wild West on the Internet some days! We have to be so vigilant.

You took the necessary steps to protect yourself and avoid charges, so you are definitely not a chump.

I'm very leery of internet sellers. I tend to only buy from a selected few, and research any new sellers carefully. Each year it seems to get worse in terms the swindles out there.

Even with sellers though Amazon you have to be super careful. Some reviews detail scams or knock-offs when it's a third party seller, even sometimes when fulfilled by Amazon.

 

[Ready]

No worries, that's why we have credit cards. Whether you do this on your own or someone stole your card and made a bunch of purchases with it, the end result would be the same. You will owe nothing and it will become the credit card companies problem. No big deal at all.

 

[Souschef]

Yup, I married the wrong girl in 1978. That cost a lot more than any pair of boots!

I made the mistake also in 1972. I would have been out in 1992

 

[CaptTom]

Two recent "chump" events, maybe others can learn from:

1) Don't Trust eBay/PayPal!!

eBay removed the seller shortly after my purchase. Since I had no way to contact the seller (their only recommended recourse) I called. They said PayPal wouldn't allow them (eBay) to refund my purchase price. I called PayPal. They also wanted me to contact the seller, first. Otherwise, they couldn't do anything for 30 days, after which I had to file a complaint with them and follow their dispute resolution process.

Note that this was AFTER eBay had removed the seller for fraud!

2) Don't Assume Your Credit Card Company Will Protect You!

An internet merchant sent DD a phone worth a fraction of the one she'd ordered (and paid for.) They refused to issue a refund, and wanted to charge a 20% restocking fee plus shipping. She disputed the charge and got a provisional refund to her account.

Got the notice almost a month later that the refund was reversed. No details as to why, just a form with a few lines on which to make a request to re-open the case. Meanwhile, the funds have been taken back out from her account pending the outcome.

Called the CC company. Apparently the seller's card issuer (bank) refused to accept the reversal, based on nothing more than a copy of the shipping label.

The ball is now in DD's court to re-open the claim. Even if there is eventually a refund, it could be months.

Note that the key here is, according to DD's CC company, it's federal law that the merchant's bank can refuse the refund. They claim they can't do anything about that.

Apparently, all a sleazy merchant needs to do is find a sleazy bank.

 

[sengsational]

I have found that if you are persistent, both 1) and 2) have a reasonable chance of successful resolution. Not in every case, but much more often than not.

With eBay, it's important to buy from a seller with a very large and positive feedback rating; if there's some seller with only a few sales with a lower price, don't fall for it! EBay's resolution process is slow, but often yields satisfactory results.

With the credit card, keep escalating. You need to keep repeating your case and counter any "evidence". Recently I went back and forth 4 or 5 times, but it was finally resolved in my favor.

 

[Marita40]

Thanks for the reassurances, although I still feel like a chump (actually, I just like using the fabulous word "chump").
Although they are disputing the charge, my credit card company wasn't interested in the fraudulent website at all. (If anyone is interested in taking a look, it is Shop Fashion Clothing & Accessories - Official Site). So the question is, should I try to report this website? If so, to whom?

 

[Gumby]

Thanks for the reassurances, although I still feel like a chump (actually, I just like using the fabulous word "chump").
Although they are disputing the charge, my credit card company wasn't interested in the fraudulent website at all. (If anyone is interested in taking a look, it is Shop Fashion Clothing & Accessories - Official Site). So the question is, should I try to report this website? If so, to whom?

The Minnesota Attorney General's Office might be interested.

https://www.ag.state.mn.us/office/complaint.asp

 

[CaptTom]

With eBay, it's important to buy from a seller with a very large and positive feedback rating; if there's some seller with only a few sales with a lower price, don't fall for it! EBay's resolution process is slow, but often yields satisfactory results.

Thanks, I should add that the seller in my case was originally legit, but the PayPal person on the phone implied that they'd been hacked. The scam, apparently, is to take the legit seller's regular merchandise and put a low price on it. Harvest all the money from sales until the account is shut down for fraud.

With the credit card, keep escalating. You need to keep repeating your case and counter any "evidence". Recently I went back and forth 4 or 5 times, but it was finally resolved in my favor.

Thanks for the encouragement. They promised to mail me the other bank's rejection documents. That should give us the ammunition needed to generate a response.

 

[Cobra9777]

DW had a very similar experience recently. She fell in love with a pair of shoes from an ad on some social media site. Clicked through and ordered them. CC was immediately charged including a foreign transaction fee. I immediately got an email notification from the CC company about a charge to PayPal. I asked her about it and she proudly showed me the shoes. I told her the website looked sketchy but that was the end of it.

Fast-forward 45 days... no shoes, no email, no phone number to call. She sent an email and got a really strange response that must have been a machine translation from Chinese. It basically said, "Don't worry, we are legit, you'll get your stuff, but things are backed up due to a snowstorm." I then Googled the name of the website and *WOW*... nothing but scam alerts, warnings, and fraud accusations.

I called our CC company (Fidelity/Elan VISA) and explained the situation. They immediately credited us for the charge and the foreign transaction fee and are mailing us a form to fill out and return.

I don't think the site is a complete fraud. Some people said they eventually got the merchandise but it took 2 months and was the wrong size and/or very poor quality, with no practical ability to return or exchange. We've had no other fraudulent charges on the CC. Meanwhile, I found almost identical shoes for DW on Amazon with 2-day shipping. So it seems that all has ended well.

 

[CaptTom]

..They immediately credited us for the charge and the foreign transaction fee and are mailing us a form to fill out and return.

Yeah, same thing happened to DW. Then, less than 30 days later, they "reversed" the refund after the seller's bank refused to honor it.

Meanwhile, I found almost identical shoes for DW on Amazon with 2-day shipping. So it seems that all has ended well.

I'm sticking with Amazon from now on!

 

[michelek]

We ordered a mattress from Amazon- received a delivery email with a tracking number- stating is was delivered- to someplace in Minnesota. Asked seller for refund but they had vanished from the Amazon site. Had to go through fraud Dept at Amazon to get a refund. Lost a lot of time- and almost cost me a bad review on Airbnb- bed was for guests arriving soon! Ended up buying one from local sams club in the nick of time.

 

[Midpack]

We all make mistakes from time to time, I’ve had some whoppers, some shared in earlier posts. You’re making the best of it, live and learn. You’re only a chump if you make the same mistake - twice.

 

[Bryan Barnfellow]

Thanks for the reassurances, although I still feel like a chump (actually, I just like using the fabulous word "chump").

It is an interesting word! Here's an excerpt from the online Word Detective:

“Chump,” meaning “an idiot, a blockhead” or “a sucker, a loser,” actually appeared in English at roughly the same time as “chum,” but has never been anything but a dismissive insult. The initial meaning of “chump” when it first appeared in print in 1680 was “a lump of wood chopped or sawed off a bigger piece,” i.e., an end-piece or trimming. The source of “chump” is, alas, uncertain, but one possible source is an Old Norse word “kumba,” meaning “block of wood,” perhaps influenced in English by the form of such words as “lump” and “stump.” In the 19th century, “chump” was used to mean the blunt end of anything (“As if they had been unskilfully cut off the chump-end of something,” Great Expectations, Dickens, 1861), as well as being slang for the human head (“Think how unpleasant it is to have your chump lopped off,” V. Nabokov, 1960). But by the late 1800s, “chump” was also being used in its modern sense of “a person as stupid as a chump of wood” (“Such a long-winded old chump at telling a story,” 1883).

-BB

 

[Marita40]

Nice! As an English major, I love etymology. I first heard the word in that great scene in Brideshead Revisited where Cordelia declares of Rex "What a chump! What a glorious chump!" in her wonderful British accent.

 

[Cobra9777]

Yeah, same thing happened to DW. Then, less than 30 days later, they "reversed" the refund after the seller's bank refused to honor it...

Interesting. I'm hoping our case is a little more straightforward than your phone example. We've never received the merchandise. We also officially canceled the order on the merchant's website, although there is no real functionality to do that like with Amazon. We just filled in a "Contact Us" form with a request to cancel the order. So who knows. And of course we got an out-of-office email because everyone is off work for Chinese New Year right now.

Anyway, our CC company said they were mailing us a form to fill out and return along with all emails and other documentation. I think the documentation is on our side at this point.