I Refuse To Blog

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

PayPal Is The Scammer's Platform

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.

So now I am out $76.89 USD for the original, fake merchandise plus over $25 CDN for return shipping and I have nothing to show for it. PayPal denied all of the claims, and the scammer got out of refunding me anything, despite getting the merchandise back! Now I was pissed. So I decided to do a little investigation into just who this asshole "Michael Tim" was.

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:

nadasher.com (https://www.facebook.com/Nadasher-109737800696108)
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

daoqon.com

kikior.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:

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...

Friday, September 4, 2020

nadasher.com Is A Scam Run By Crooks

BUYER BEWARE! nadasher.com is a scam website run by a bunch of crooks! Despite looking like a reputable website I was recently scammed by them, and apparently many others have been as well. Note to self - check scamdoc.com in the future before ordering from a new website. Here is a little story explaining how I got shafted. Come along with me, won't you?

At the beginning of the summer they were offering an incredible sale on woven poly shade sails identical to this latest scam webpage on their site right now . When I ordered it was an identical page, but at a different URL. There was an option for "express shipping", which I paid for because I wanted them quickly to have them for the bulk of the summer. Well, after one month, they still had not arrived. I emailed support and they assured me they were on the way, and blamed COVID for any delays. I tried to check my order online and my order page link was Error 404, as was the original product page that I had ordered from. It had vanished completely from the website. RED FLAG! I also checked their tracking number and, of course, it was coming from China and had no information for the last month except that it had left the country. Great...

After another month of waiting and a couple more emails with no information except the same useless tracking number the package finally arrived and it was NOT AT ALL what I had ordered. I'd been well-shafted, and they had left the K-Y at home. The sails I received look like shitty tent flaps compared to the woven polyethylene and stainless steel sails on their website.

Just a reminder, this is what I had ordered, in the color Khaki:

This is what arrived at my door after two months:

I emailed support again and they had the brass balls to not only refuse to offer me a full refund, but charge me shipping to return them. They claimed since this would cost me roughly $20 USD they'd give me a refund of only 10% of the original price, and asked that I leave them a positive review on their website (which doesn't even have a place to leave a review BTW...). I said no and demanded a full refund since this is false advertising, at which point they claimed I was wrong and I got what I ordered (again, I ordered "Khaki" woven polyethylene and what I got was puke orange, shitty tent flap). They claim the current product on the website is a different one, and I ordered those shitty sails. Conveniently for them, my order receipt does not include a picture (but does say "Khaki" in the description), and the original product page has disappeared. But I assure you it was identical to this page and I have saved a PDF copy if that one goes missing.

Now they are not responding. At this point I have done some more research and see that they basically make a living off of screwing people over. They have no intention of giving me a refund and have taken my money (and the money of others) and laughed all the way to the bank. Damn them to hell.

These people are dishonest! I can only hope that karma brings them what they deserve and I curse them with 99 years of bad luck! Phtooey!

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Starkey Mission to China, 2014 - The Journey Home

Well, that's it. The Starkey Mission to China has come to an end for Rosaline, David and I. It has been an incredible two weeks, and I think that all three of us would agree that it was the experience of a lifetime.

The journey home was fairly uneventful. We took a plane from Lijiang airport to Beijing (and our tickets were valid this time!), then had a final flight home from Beijing to Toronto. The unusual thing was the flight home from Beijing was half-empty! That never happens! So Rosaline and I had an empty seat between us, and David had lots of room as well!

It was a pretty easy flight home, all things considered, and I made it back to my house before 8 pm. I was very glad to see my family after being away for so long, and I was extremely happy to be sleeping in my own bed!

I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Starkey Hearing Foundation, as well as my employer for allowing me to participate in such an experience. I would also like to say "thank you" to Rosaline for being such an excellent travelling companion and bailing me out in all those situations where I could not speak the language. I also want to thank David as well for being such a cool guy to travel and share a drink with. I'm really glad I met you, and I hope we meet again (preferably at a pub!) in the future!

Finally, I would like to say thank you and best of luck to all the wonderful people I met on this journey. From the film crew to the audiologists to Bill and Tani. At the risk of missing someone, I'll try to name as many as I can. To Bill, Tani, Kevin, Mark M., Tony, John, Britta, Maricela, Henry, Laura, Sonia, Gary, David, Rosaline, Joe, Bridget, Dennis and Leslie, Wayne and Todd, Patricia and Sabrina, Eric H., Mark M., Marti, Pam, Scott, Dave, Eric B., Robert, Chris, Jimmy and Jennifer as well as all the translators (especially Jessie!), Starkey China employees and the wonderful people of Yunnan province - THANK YOU!

Monday, October 20, 2014

Starkey Mission to China, 2014 - Day 14 (Part 2)

After the tour of Snow Mountain, Rosaline, David and I hopped in a cab and headed for Old Town. David had already been to Old Town the first day, but was eager enough to go back. Rosaline and I had not seen any of the sights yet, and apparently the view from Black Dragon Pool is world famous (not to mention highly recommended by David) so we were definitely looking forward to that.

Right away the view was astounding.

We started out looking down on Old Town, and slowly wended our way down through alley-ways and back passages. We came across a group of older ladies carrying baskets filled with bricks up a fairly steep incline. Remind me not to complain about my lower back problems any more!

There were tiny hotels, restaurants and bars nestled in every nook and cranny; it sort of reminded me of Europe. If you got rid of the Chinese characters, you would think you were in a different country!

Live eels for lunch, anyone?

About half-way down we came across the Wang Pi-Zhen Memorial Hall. Apparently this guy was a prolific writer who was born in Old Town Lijiang, but didn't start writing until after his retirement! I guess it is never too late. :)

We finally made it down to the merchant area of Old Town and Rosaline and I were desperately trying to find some last-minute gifts. David had already bought everything he wanted so he was ready to find a place to grab a beer. Unfortunately, Rosaline and I weren't having much luck so while David went in search of a pint we went in search of more shopping.

After we found each other again, Rosaline and I had found pretty much everything we needed, and David had also found his beer, so it was time to head to the Black Dragon Pool. On the way we came across a famous music theatre - the Naxi Concert Hall.

I thought this photo was particularly artsy-looking.

Old Town had many sights to see. The canals looked beautiful with all of their well-tended gardens.

There was also the famous waterwheel. I was intrigued by this device as the two wheels move at different speeds, and I was envisioning all sorts of gears or clever routing of the water to make this happen, until I really thought about it - they're different diameters. Duh.

The other thing to note was the presence of both a McDonalds and a Pizza Hut in the main square! This is Old Town, right??

We finally made it to the entrance of Jade Spring Park, where we would find the Black Dragon Pool. We had to pay 80 yuan to get in, but it was worth the price of admission.

I assume this means "Garbage"?

So here it is. The million dollar view. This is the mountain we hiked up this morning. Now that we were here, I was starting to realize just how tired my legs and back were from all of the walking I had done today. There was plenty of other things to see in the park, but we were all getting very tired and looking forward to having some supper (and sitting down!). You just can't not take pictures of this kind of view though!

There apparently was a large pagoda in the area and David and I went on a bit of a "backwoods trek" to find it and stumbled across this building. I'm not sure what it is, but it looked like it may have been a hotel or even apartments as people seemed to be staying in it. It had a really nice central garden.

At this point, it was around 5 pm and we were tired and hungry. We decided to go to the Maya Cafe, which gets big reviews on TripAdvisor, and which David and the rest of the gang had visited on the first day. This little restaurant is a really cool place. It is run by an Indian couple (Mamuana and Maya), and the food and atmosphere are fantastic!

When we arrived they looked closed, but apparently there was an unexpected power outage. We were told the beer was cold and the curry was already made for the day, so we decided to stay. We had incredible curry by candlelight, while Stevie Ray Vaughan blasted out in tinny splendour from the owner's cellphone. It turns out he is a guitarist and was hoping to also release an album of his own songs in the future. I left him an Audiofab business card. :)

Mid-way through the meal the power came back on, and we enjoyed ice cream cheesecake for dessert. What an awesome ending to a great day.

The view from the Maya Cafe.

As it was getting dark we decided to find our way out of Old Town and get a cab back to the hotel. On the way out, we passed this appetizing attraction outside one of the restaurants. I believe that is (was) a goat? I imagine this is what I was eating the other night in Chuxiong.

After exiting Old Town, we decided to walk around downtown Lijiang for awhile and do some more shopping. I was still hoping I would get lucky and come across a costume store where I could pick up an Assassin's Creed costume for Drew. While we did not find a costume store (big surprise), we did see downtown Lijiang and Rosaline picked up some more gifts. There was an incredible deal on The North Face jackets as well, but I was all shopped out. We ended up walking around for another hour or so and then found a cab back to the hotel ready for some much-needed rest for our journey home in the morning.

Starkey Mission to China, 2014 - Day 14 (Part 1)

Today is our last day in China.

It has been a fantastic experience, and today's planned activities should be the proverbial "cherry on top" as we are heading to the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain to take a guided tour, and then Rosaline, David and myself have the entire afternoon to ourselves as we don't fly out until tomorrow morning. Everyone else is leaving today and either going home, or continuing on to the next leg of the marathon, multi-country journey that the Starkey Hearing Foundation is in the midst of at the moment. Some people (Jimmy!) are missing out on the mountain tour as they are headed off immediately to Nairobi for a few days of training, and others are off to Afghanistan (yikes!) and then on to Kenya. Between war and ebola, there are some brave and special people involved with the Starkey Hearing Foundation.

Going through my pictures of today...this is going to be a long post! Let's get started!

We got up in the morning and said some emotional "good-bye"s to the people that were leaving right away. Then we loaded into two different buses and headed out to Snow Mountain. Our bus driver was insane. I think he must have been a failed Formula 1 driver as he we driving like a maniac, honking his horn at anything that moved, and passing everything on the road, including the other bus. We passed some gorgeous scenery on the way there, including a spectacular gorge that I would have loved to get some photos of, but we were going so fast, I couldn't even pull off a crappy picture through the window of the bus. I wish we would have been able to stop for a few minutes at one of the many scenic areas along the way. Oh well. Surprisingly, we made it to the mountain alive and piled out to start our tour.

We were given oxygen canisters and parkas (if we wanted them), and then we were able to bypass the very long public line for the gondola as we were VIPs. It was great, but I must admit I did feel a bit douchey cutting ahead of everyone.

At the top of the gondola there were a bunch of shops, and a marker indicating we had just rode another 1100 meters up from the already high base station.

We were told we had 20 minutes and that would be plenty of time to walk to the top and back. We naïvely started out, but I came to the conclusion pretty quickly that making this journey in 20 minutes was never going to happen.

I decided that I was going to try to make it to the top without using any oxygen. People all around me were sucking it back like crazy, and I must admit, I started out too quickly - but slowing my pace and stopping fairly regularly for pictures, I was able to make good time and I ended up not using any oxygen during the climb. It was great to get some real exercise after being relatively sedentary for two weeks.

Halfway up there was a guy with a hawk that allowed you to have your picture taken with the bird. This adventurous fellow decided to remove his shirt and take advantage of some props, much to the amusement of his cronies.

After about twenty minutes of climbing, the end was in sight.

I finally made it to the top! It sure seemed much farther than 175 meters, but I guess that is a significant climb (especially in thin air!). After taking a few more pictures, it was time to head back down. I had some BBMs from Eric that the group (the ones who didn't climb) had already gone down the gondola, and he was waiting for the rest of us. There were quite a few people behind me that were still climbing, so I figured I had time to take some more pictures on the way down. The view was awesome, despite the cloud cover.

After we hiked back down and rode the gondola back to the bottom, there was time for a couple glamour shots with the incredible scenery as a backdrop.

After that we piled into the buses and our lunatic driver raced us back to the hotel in record time. At this point, pretty much everyone else was leaving. Only Rosaline, David and I plus a few of the Starkey China employees were staying one more night. We said our farewells to the group, wished them well, exchanged contact info, and Rosaline, David and I went back to our rooms to prepare for an afternoon and evening in Old Town.