I saw a video ad on Facebook for a product that looked interesting and high-quality. (I believe it actually is.) Later, I ordered the product—but I ordered it from a different site than the actual makers of the video, who made their own original product. I only realized this when the cheap, ultra-low-quality product arrived.
I believe I must have ordered the product from another ad which appeared based on my interest in the first, legitimate ad.
I've started the process of requesting a refund from the website I mistakenly used, but something bothered me about this:
- The product is about $30; I ordered two with a 10% discount, so about $55 plus tax and $6 shipping.
- The website states that the shipping is not refundable; also I pay the return shipping.
- For the high-quality product of which this is a ripoff version, $30 is a reasonable price. Actually the real product is $40 for one; I checked.
- I would estimate the manufacturing costs on the ripoff product are about $0.50.
It irks me to consider paying the shipping fee to send the crap product back to these con artists, so they can just keep sending out this ripoff product to mark after mark (at no cost to them) until someone doesn't bother to navigate their refund process and pay the shipping fee, and just "lumps" the full cost of the purchase.
Is there some other action I can take against them? For instance, could I report them to my credit card company as scammers and get the charge reversed (and hopefully if enough people do this, then the credit card companies will refuse to process their transactions)?
Incidentally, after the product arrived, I checked the website on WHOIS and found it's registered in India. It's also worth mentioning that the product took 6 1/2 weeks to arrive.
Edit: The following quote from their return policy (published on their website) may also be relevant as far as any action that can be taken:
Please make sure you send the item back as a gift as we don't cover custom fees for returns.
Possibly there is a federal agency that would be interested in them inciting customs fraud?