In my previous post I outlined how nadasher.com was a scam site run by a bunch of crooks. Well, that is indeed very, very true - but little did I know my adventure was FAR from over. I also had no idea just how badly I would get screwed, nor did I know just how HUGE this scam network (run by the same people, or group of people) really is. I also found out just how USELESS PayPal is when it comes to dealing with claims against scammers. In fact, they really have no interest at all in resolving claims like these. Their claims system is brutal and totally geared towards having claims close on a technicality, or simply close due to the user giving up in absolute frustration. This is not just my experience, but proven by the hundreds of failed claims in their own support forum (see the links below). PayPal offers zero buyer protection, and a wonderful system for scammers to leverage while they repeatedly scam others over and over with absolutely no repercussions. I will NEVER use PayPal again for any purchase, and will trumpet just how useless their system is in terms of buyer protection from all the rooftops. You're better to use your credit card directly (at least they offer some form of protection), Google Pay, or some other form of payment.
Since my last post back in September 2020, I had contacted my credit card company and I also entered the festering hellhole that is the PayPal claims system. Interestingly, now that I am writing this I see that my existing PayPal claim is not visible in my Resolution Center dashboard anymore unless I search by case ID. My dashboard says I have 0 closed cases, yet if I look up the old case number it is there with status "Closed". Further proof they just make it as hard for the customer as possible. Anyway, back to the story! Since my credit card company seemed willing to help, but had a time limit on filing a claim that was very close to expiring (and simply getting the information they wanted would have taken too long) I decided filing a claim with PayPal was my best chance (LOL). I filed the claim, and basically this just put me in touch directly with the same group of idiots I was already emailing - the scammers themselves! Except now instead of email, I got to interact with them through a brain-dead web interface with over 24 hours lag between responses, and no way to send more than one response at a time without the system locking you out from commenting further until the scammer responded! Anyway, the scammer himself, one "Michael Tim" (or some group of people posing as him) offered me the same thing I was already offered numerous times over email:
Dear Customer, Thank you for your email. I'm sorry to hear that you are unwilling to accept this suggestion. This is the best advice I can give you, but in this case we would like to provide you with an exceptional advice, only to you: how can we offer you a 40% refund product. Otherwise, you will need more than $ 20 shipping to return the product to us and the customer will be responsible for the returned shipping. Looking forward to your reply. Have a nice day. Best wishes! CS Shawe
Not particularly amused, I responded with:
Your company is known for scamming people with false advertising and shady business tactics and what you are doing is illegal. I will only accept a full refund, and I will not pay a penny to return these. If you want them back, you pay for shipping. If you don't agree with this, my next response will escalate to PayPal. I don't have time for your nonsense.
After refusing this, I was offered a 60% refund:
Dear customer, Thanks for your support and concern on our store. Very sorry that our suggestion still not satisfied you.Per checked with our manager, he don't agree to provide a higher discount as the product can be used and we also provide logistics service, even though, we apply a highest discount for you, we decide to offer 60% refund of the production, which we rarely prodide for customer before.Hope you could accept. Sorry for the inconvenience brought to you. Have a nice day Best regards CS Alice
At this point I "escalated to PayPal" in their claims system. Now instead of 24 hour response time I got roughly 3-5 business days between responses from PayPal requesting one ridiculous piece of documentation after another. It started with me having to start over and re-hash everything that I had already put into their stupid system already, again locking me out of providing further information until they deigned to offer some reply, which was always a request for more documentation. Eventually they requested that I provide proof that I filed an official police report, and I had three days to comply (despite the fact that it took them up to 5 days to even reply to my latest update)!! I even did this - filing a report online, and providing that documentation. I'm convinced I could have taken a picture of my taint and filed that and it still would have been "achievement unlocked" to the next level. I also resorted to publicly shaming PayPal on Twitter in parallel. This did get a response and I got what seemed like a real person offering to help me out in the claims process.
This moved my claim along, but basically culminated in the conclusion that I had to pay to ship the items back to the seller at my expense. They did eventually hint that I could file another claim to recoup my shipping costs up to $25. Fine. It had been months of me ripping my hair out and gnashing my teeth trying to get my money back for these shitty fucking shade sails I got screwed on, so I wasn't about to give up now. I packed up the goddamn things and shipped them Canada Post for the cheapest option I could find that cost around $25 on a slow boat to China. The funny thing was, I never got a return address from the seller, nor from PayPal - I found one by Googling the scammer and finding some bullshit address given to another poor soul such as myself who got scammed by the same Michael Tim for some other shit item they received. That address is:
No.3, Zhenxing East Yiheng Road Gaobu Town Dongguan city, Guangdong province 523000 CN
If you go ahead and Google that, you will find other people who got scammed and tried to return items to these assholes, and one of the top results is this gem from PayPal's own forums again.
So now the package was on the way back to some address which I figured was fake, but all I wanted was proof I returned the package so I could get a refund from PayPal (LOL). As it turns out, while Canada Post includes tracking on all of their shipments in Canada (which I had used a few times before), little did I know that their international packages do NOT include tracking services unless you pay extra for that (which, of course, would have put me over the $25 reimbursement limit PayPal offered). Ignorant of this, I proceeded to file another claim for shipping costs reimbursement, which - long story short - PayPal would not grant until I had proof the seller received the package.
At this point I engaged in 3 more months of email back and forth with the three various support emails for nadasher.com - service@crogreat.com, service@grereply.com and service@nadasher.com - trying to get one of them to admit that they had received the package since I did not have any tracking information as proof of delivery. It was another hilarious exercise in futility, as I was repeatedly asked for the same information from many different people but eventually I did get a confirmation that the package was received at their "factory" and my refund would be issued within 3-5 business days!
Wow! Success!
NOT!
I waited over one month more, with constant re-assurances that my refund would be available in my PayPal account, but it never arrived. Eventually, as my tone got snarkier, their story changed to the following:
Now I have three email threads with hundreds of responses, ranging from "we can't find your order in our system" to "we can only offer you a 10% (or 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, and 60%) refund" to "your refund is on the way" to "sorry - your return time is expired".
At the same time, despite having email proof the seller received my package, PayPal refused to refund my shipping costs because I did not have a tracking number. My original claim was also denied after months of effort because I did not prove with a tracking number that the item was returned.
Buckle up!
One of the more hilarious parts in all of this is when I finally received the original, shitty merchandise in the mail, it had this funny little business card inside and was the first thing that fell out of the package:
That's confidence in customer satisfaction! It's almost like they knew they fucked me over and expected me to want a refund....hmm.....
As I mentioned before, I had three separate support email addresses from my interactions with these dickheads - service@crogreat.com, service@grereply.com and service@nadasher.com. So I decided to just Google all of them and accumulate all the information I found on these jerks. Well, I was not expecting this...
I found the following list of domains (many of which have been taken down since I started investigating) that seem to be connected to these support addresses, or the name Michael Tim:
pamonny.com (https://www.facebook.com/Pamonny-shop-103662754350881)
flastal.com
abdserry.com
ibdlion.com
worterris.com
tomaob.com
owthin.com (https://www.facebook.com/Owthin-106348407791532)
ousykt.com (https://www.facebook.com/Ousykts-100846675030934)
farslen.com
paulge.com
sliberry.com
adbehind.com
kbhamk.com
cerxin.com (https://www.facebook.com/Cerxinstore-103574094698570/about/?ref=page_internal)
sarbyt.com
aetoral.com
clayben.com
dollcation.com
vevor.ca
aifeimall.com
rtahlu.com
anbrady.com
meltoncream.com
rosethar.com
cocopali.com
eughee.com
upaoth.com
gleort.com
pgkrsty.com
hirehug.com
japonicus.net
rollinsh.com
mococolly.com
fairylifeon.com
bugpugdone.com
www.originalbeautyy.com
missrol.com
www.tadecharm.club
www.poomoy.com
betyysy.com
warmsunshop.com
shopyyw.com
kobemb.com
ruberxa.com (https://www.facebook.com/Ruberxastore-100586145033410/about/)
awnaen.com
yongaw.com
hyluarn.com
worscy.com (https://www.facebook.com/Worscy-2-115120216897024/about/)
www.xtraordinarys.com
www.themanager.cc
ealany.net
Almost all of these domains are peddling some legit-looking wares, but are shipping absolute shit to people that buy from them. Almost all of them also have the same, cookie-cutter appearance, with the same Chinglish tripe in the About page:
Hey, we are <insert your scam business here>!
You may have seen us, but who are we? ! We are a new type of internet e-commerce company. We are located in the heart of London and design all home, outdoor, clothing and other products. We were inspired by the calm breeze of the city and the Atlantic Ocean. But our main goal? Give you a product you like and can't wait to show off. Our products are unique because you are too! We hope that you like them, just as we like to make them.
You probably arrived here through one of the super awesome social media communities Apps that we give our full 24/7 support to. We want to share the best shopping experience with you and give you the very best of what we have found. If you have any suggestions with our website ,please contact us with following E- mail: service@<bullshitdomain>.com
We would like waiting for you here!!!
Performing a WHOIS on these domains reveals they are almost all registered in China with Alibaba Cloud Computing (Beijing) Co., Ltd.. DNS servers are DNS3.HICHINA.COM and DNS4.HICHINA.COM, and the domain abuse email address is DomainAbuse@service.aliyun.com.
I also found many, many reports of others who were scammed (most using PayPal) using the same support addresses, and the infamous Michael Tim. Here is a sampling:
https://www.signal-arnaques.com/en/scam/view/257304
https://www.signal-arnaques.com/en/scam/view/257389
https://www.signal-arnaques.com/en/scam/view/259498
https://www.signal-arnaques.com/en/scam/view/260000
https://www.signal-arnaques.com/en/scam/view/267175
https://www.signal-arnaques.com/en/scam/view/221941
https://www.signal-arnaques.com/en/scam/view/257933
https://www.signal-arnaques.com/en/scam/view/270429
https://www.signal-arnaques.com/en/scam/view/254664
https://www.facebook.com/Tomaobcom-is-a-SCAM-113627333754182
https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/Disputes-and-Limitations/crogreat-com/td-p/2320862#
https://facebook-marketplace.pissedconsumer.com/product-not-as-discribed-202007062035969.html
I'm sure there are many, many other sites that are now active and many other people getting shafted as I type this, all facilitated by PayPal - who just doesn't give a damn. I will be sharing this on all possible social media channels and encouraging all of my friends to do so as well. I hope that my loss of well over a hundred dollars Canadian, and many times that in my precious time at least may result in someone else not being scammed after reading this. I also hope that PayPal will do the right thing and shut assholes like this down instead of letting them profit off of unsuspecting consumers.
Oh, and this is far from over...
