Shopify shops Scam

I’m writing this because I’ve been stupid enough to buy some clothes in a shopify store after an ad I saw on Facebook. Basically:

• I saw the ad on Facebook, there was a beautiful and warm legging I wanted to buy for my wife
• I entered the site and I really liked the way it was designed: clean, clear, beautiful photos.
• I was stupid enough to not:
  • Check the terms and conditions
  • Check whether there was an address related to the owners of the website
  • Check the company VAT Number (there wasn’t any)
• Anyway, I made 2 orders for an amount of around 100€
• I received the orders 3 weeks later and the material I received had nothing to do with the pictures I saw on the website: very poor product quality, incorrect sizes, product different from what I purchased.

After placing the order and not having any news for 2 weeks, I found out that the delivery time was higher than 2 weeks (stupid of me, again, for not checking that). At that point I said to myself: this is really weird. It was then when I started checking all the things that I should have checked before buying anything.

The stupidest thing is that I’m a professional of the e-commerce world. I was carried away by the website appearance and the need to buy gifts for my wife because Christmas was coming.

But I’m not writing this post only because of what happened to me. It has happened also to my wife! Also, to my mother and my sister (each one separately). We have shared our experiences, and it happened the same to all of us:

• We all run into a Facebook ad with very beautiful images
• We all entered a very beautiful website with beautiful pictures
• We all purchased products and received things that had nothing to do with the product we saw on the website
• None of the websites contained VAT information, nor an address or any other contact method except an email

Shopify doesn’t seem to check the quality or the ‘legality’ of the sites being created using its platform. As long as they continue doing nothing about this, I won’t buy anything from them. Shopify = Insecurity at this moment.

I’ve been checking the Shopify Forums (in Spanish) and it’s surprising the high number of people complaining about Shopify Shops Scam and Shopify protecting buyers and not customers.

Be careful if you run into a website which is beautiful, has been made with Shopify and has no legal information at all: it’s a scam.