Norwood London- feel a bit sick that they may not refund me- any experiences?

[Summergarden]

Hello,

A week ago I ordered a few pairs of trainers from a company called Norwood London. I have wide feet and always find it very difficult to find shoes that fit comfortably, especially trainers. As they are a mail order company, I ordered 3 pairs of trainers, each in 2 different sizes. I didn’t look up the returns policy in detail at the time but it stated ‘easy returns’.

They have arrived, and unfortunately none of them fit particularly comfortably. The smaller size ones pinch at the toes and larger ones are far too big both length and width. So I looked on their website and it asks you to send them an email to begin a returns procedure… to send the shoes back to a warehouse in Asia! Given that the company is called Norwood London, I was very surprised to see they have to be sent back to Asia. I expected to return them at my own cost, especially as I ordered several sizes, but have no idea how much this ‘easy return’ to Asia at my own cost is going to be :/

Also, it was only when looking up how to return them that I saw it stated ‘ordering multiple sizes with the intention of returning incorrect fitting shoes is not permitted’. I have never seen this rule and honestly thought it was pretty common for customers to order multiple sizes of shoes and return the ones that don’t fit- at the customer’s own expense, of course. It certainly wasn’t made at all clear at the time of ordering that this rule existed.

Just wondered if anyone has had experience of needing to return items to this company and how they found it please?

You are covered by distance selling regs so they can't make up random rules.

I don’t have personal experience but the Trustpilot isn’t good 😬 https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/norwoodlondon.com

Not if it’s a foreign company you’re not.

I’ve also fallen foul of a company that looked completely British but turned out to be absolute crap. The dress that arrived looked vaguely like the picture but was the thinnest crappest material. They offered a small refund and it took a lot of arguing over email to get most of my money back. Good luck.

Oh no, wish I’d read that first 😔. I feel so daft now, but even now looking at the website with the supposed founders photos on it looks pretty genuine and trustworthy. Will I ever get most of my money back, wonder if I can try via my credit card?

I got caught a few years ago. The quality was awful. There are lots of ' London ' companies. Check first.

Step 1 send an email and request the refund process is started. If they refuse to refund then go to your CC. Distance selling regs apply but no doubt if they’re a scummy company they’ll try their luck. You can also raise with citizens advice who will flag with trading standards.

You are covered

Thank you, I will try this.

There are a couple of episodes on the BBC Radio Sounds series - Scam Secrets which might help you, The great knitted cardigan scam and The customer services return scam. I can't remember which episode it was, but they were talking about these fake UK companies, and I think they recommended starting the required process of asking for refund, but then asking for some sort of recall of payment from your bank - I can't remember the exact term they used, sorry. The case sounded very similar to yours.

Unfortunately, the website is very formulaic, it's a standard Shopify layout, the same as a lot of the scam companies that sell through FB/Instagram ads mainly. Some Shopify sites are legitimate but there are a lot of scam sites which use them as well.

Other red flags - constant massive discounts on almost everything. No real small business has this.

The text on the "About Us" page reads as very AI-generated. I would expect the photograph of the founders may be too. And yes, the use of random UK place names in their branding is meant to make you assume that they are UK-based.

These websites can be really convincing the first time you see them. Once you've seen a few of them the formula is recognisable. Of course once they get too widely recognised the scammers will change the format. I'm sorry, I hope your bank is supportive in getting the money back.

Trustpilot is a good place to check for future reference and you can do a whois lookup on the domain name as well, although this one just goes to a Canadian domain host.

Thank you. I don’t order much online so am a bit naive about these types of websites. Will be a lot more cautious in future!

There’s always two women in cream clothes on these websites!

I got loads of of help recently from Trading Standards, they were excellent.

You can tell by the website it's a scam, it's so basic and the photos look like they're straight from Temu. I think if you don't order much online then it's best to stick to well known brands like Adidas, Mango, FatFace, take a look at their website and you can clearly see the difference, real models, proper photos of the item, nice font and descriptions. If you can't tell a scam from a legitimate site then don't order online.

Paying for return postage is completely legal by the way but they have to refund you the entire purchase price including any outbound postage.

I always pay via Paypal and they have been good about getting my money back under these circumstances. Your credit card should be able to help but online sellers are tightening up on people who buy multiple sizes/ colours and want to return.

Just looked at the site. Agree with @BertieBotts that the text on the ‘About Us’ page is likely AI- it’s really repetitive waffle and doesn’t say much at all. They just seem to have found several different ways of saying that they specialise in comfortable shoes for women over multiple paragraphs.

The positioning of the photos and text implies that the photo of the two women is a photo of the founders and I would expect to see some text giving their names and explaining how they came to start the business. But that is nowhere to be seen and the photos of the models are most likely AI too. It’s definitely worth always looking at the returns policy before ordering.

I do hope you get your money back OP. If not, is it worth trying to resell them on Vinted? (Assuming the quality of the shoes is actually ok). Sorry you got stung like this OP. I hate this modern world sometimes; was so much easier when you could just go into a local shop
and buy some shoes 😞

Good luck enforcing UK legislation with chinese tat-merchants.

There are a couple of threads running on style ands beauty about how to spot these companies.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/style_and_beauty/5544308-spotting-scam-websites-before-buying?reply=153032722

The name is suspect, Norwood is a very large cemetery in London!

How much did they cost?

I know of South Norwood, West Norwood, Norwood Junction, and Norwood Cemetary. I lived in West Norwood for a time, which wasn’t the most glamorous or stylish place. The company or individuals behind this site have obviously just looked at a map of London and plucked a name off it, thinking that anything associated with London will sound stylish. They’ve certainly never been to West Norwood 😬 (Although possibly it’s been gentrified since I was there).

We’ve all fallen for these things OP, it’s hard to spot them. I’ve now taken to checking Trustpilot before I use any unfamiliar site.

In my experience, once you start the returns process, you’ll either hear nothing, or you’ll get emails in broken English offering you 10% off, then 20% maybe. Keep pushing them for a full refund.

They can’t prove you ordered a range of sizes for yourself. You could easily say they were all gifts for other people.

The best outcome is that you send repeated emails and they ignore you, because then you can do a chargeback on your credit card. From memory I don’t think that process can start until after 30 days, but I could be wrong. Ring your credit card company to find out their policy.

I successfully did a chargeback via Tesco Mastercard a few years ago. I had to show I’d contacted the company multiple times and done everything I could to engage with them. It was all quite straightforward and I got my money back. Hilariously, about a year later, Tesco told me that the dodgy company had just challenged the chargeback! Tesco told them where to go, and I heard no more about it.

Chargeback via credit/debit card company is the only way the OP will see her money again.

The shoes are very unlikely to be worth much on Vinted.

£39 per pair. They are honestly not worth that, they claimed to be orthopaedic trainers but they look very cheaply made and poor quality.