Do not buy from 'Made By Jessica'!

[AgentPidge]

I bought two dresses online (£39 each) from what I thought was a UK-based boutique after a recommendation on a thread on MN. The website shows a pregnant woman, and says that 'Jessica' is closing her boutique due to the imminent arrival of her baby and is selling off stock at half price. The OP said about how much she loved the shop, etc.
Alarm bells should have rung when they ask for £4.99 insurance (to send a parcel from Surrey?). Also because there was no description of the fabric content given, only that it was a 'light and airy summer fabric'. They took a long time to arrive (direct from China?) and came today. The material is almost plastic, and they are a heavy weight, huge, shoddily made, with no labels (fabric content, washing instructions, brand) apart from 'Medium'.
Looking at Trustpilot, lots of people have the same story. They are Hong Kong based. There does not seem to be a UK store. 'Made by Jessica' my arse. They promise easy returns and refunds, but I don't hold out much hope, and it will cost a fortune to send them back to China. But will update.

I don’t entirely trust reviews on Trustpilot either. So many can be 5 star but if you filter for 1 star and recent you can see some reality. One well known travel agent has very suspiciously high rankings.
Some people are paid via company concessions to put on wildly over rated reviews. And some of those tell you nothing about the product.
Some of the worst are insurance products. Eg. Great easy to use website. Which is pretty worthless. What you need is how are they when you need to get in touch or you need to claim. Don’t see those reviews.
Then you get the copycat reviewers. Who seem to want to be liked by the company/hairdresser/beauty place whatever. And put ingratiatingly ‘love it’ reviews online. Some of them seem worded so similarly to ones before that they are almost cloned. Very odd.

I don't entirely trust some British websites.. odd how I have to enter my phone number for an online order then wake up to 404 emails in my 'junk' folder..

Thank you.

I don't know if it has been mentioned, but also avoid "Tracey of London" i waa distracted by their sale offer on a trouser suit, it was absolute rubbish teeny tiny despite ordering my size and the quality was shocking, no refunds obviously but they offered me credit ! They are based in China i was so annoyed at myself for falling for it.

Exactly! Along with the picture of "Jessica" "reviews" on the website about how they'd miss her etc, I was taken in. It was only later that I had a really good look and realised that all those styles and sizes of dresses, jackets, shoes and everything else couldn't possibly all be made by Jessica on her sewing machine in the back room!

I'll do that. Thanks.

My Mum falls for these all the time on FB, drives me insane. I've told her that if there isn't a UK phone number on the site and just an email for contact, she's not allowed to order anything. But she doesn't understand that just because it's got London in the name it doesn't mean they're operating from the UK . She's lost hundreds of £s over the last few years. My poor stepdad turns the wi-fi off regularly to try and stop her as they've got no phone signal in the house.

I fell for a “Welsh” knitted item that came from China - scratchy, cheap material - and tiny despite being a “Large” (I’m a size 12).

It fit my size 8 elderly mother and she wore it over a t shirt when she was gardening.

I stick to known brands now such as Hush and John Lewis, which is a shame for the small, genuine retailers out there.

I’m afraid drop shipping is massive and these shop fronts are just a name - it’s very easy to do - I’m very very cautious these days on such places - do an AI search of is xxxx brand in Surrey etc - often this tells you all you need to know , delivery times often the give away aswell - Google and trust pilot useful before you buy

Have you not seen all the reports about this? It’s well known that AI generated pics of (first example) Mary and Sarah boutique based in X town are totally fake. I always look at trustpilot reviews if I’m considering ordering from a FB ad or similar. Some are legit, many are not. Clue (other than the mom and pop/family business trope) is the massively discounted prices, generic pics and claims of ‘handmade’ when you can do an image search and find the exact same thing on half a dozen sites. Recently there seems to be a lot of ‘don’t scroll by / support my young son/grandmother and give some love to his/her crochet business’ with a pic of an 11 year old (or elderly woman) making too good to be true floral objects. They are ubiquitous.

Bohemia Style elevenforest

I am useless at c&ping, but this ad came flashing on just as I was reading this thread. Beautiful clothing, sham site that sends out tat....I dont know if the pic will show.

it says at the bottom of the page ships from Hong Kong

I did start a thread about this weeks ago, a mod came in the thread and asked me to post a link, I did, heard nothing since.

I do think MN should be more careful with the ads they allow on here...if that's possible.

Has anyone posted the Burgundy Shirt Thread from last year?

If you really like an item and trust pilot doesn’t have enough information:
Check the headquarters, check where they ship from, look for multiple discussions online.

we do buy things from China and Korea because they are more likely to fit my daughter. Saying she is petite is inadequate. We research like crazy and go into it knowing that a certain fraction of the items just aren’t going to fit right. Returns are prohibitively expensive so we just donate and consider that part of the cost of making the orders.

@AgentPidge I also commented re how i got funds back if that helps

It doesn't need to be a credit card - now your bank will refund a debit card payment in this situation and with the evidence you've described. You can also say they're in breach of Consumer law if they don't have a fabric label in them. Call your bank's fraud/scam line. I'm speaking from experience as I got sucked into one of these and the bank was extremely helpful. I got all my money back. Good luck.

Ha ha there is an advert on this page right now for 'Natural linen pants for women. Sadly we are closing our store ... 50% off'!

No, I hadn't seen reports about this. I thought you only got crap from Temu and Shein, who at least are upfront about it.
The picture of the dress I bought shows crinkly material, and what turned up looks like something you'd make swimsuits out of. I'm not used to that kind of misrepresentation. Their website shows something like 4.6 stars on TrustPilot, plus loads of 4 and 5 star reviews. It's only now I realise you can't click on any of these, and the real TrustPilot site has loads of 1 star reviews and warnings.
But lesson learned!
Obviously I was naive, but I liked the dress in the picture (also obviously).

I fell for a bra ad where a woman in a point shirt draws where her boobs are before and after the bra. No bra has arrived

I've fallen for this with some 'pure wool' socks!

I always, always check the small print now - terms of service - where the headquarters are, where it's shipped from, returns policy. If something doesn't have fabric content either I'm not buying it (although I know these companies lie there seems to be a few legit ones that aren't listing this anymore so they can get away with charging loads for cheap materials ).

Trust pilot is useful but there's a lot of fake reviews.

Now I know what to look for, one look at the front page of that Made in Jessica site and it's obvious it's not legit. At least you now know the signs OP!

Yes, there's two ways of getting money back and in this case, it's likely to be the charge back route, which applies to both credit and debit cards and applies to all transactions.

While the one where it has to be a credit card, that's section 75, you can only use this if you've spent more than £100.

But seeing as these sites are also stealing data, I wouldn't be using the debit card attached to my main bank account because if they do start stealing your money, that could cause difficulties with DDs for bills etc.

A credit card seems much safer as it's separate and they're only taking 'credit' not your actual money - for the Mumsnetters who 'don't need a credit card' this is one of the many reasons, none of which are spending money you don't have, why you do.

I did get caught by them (Fenvio). And the worst thing was the ordering page is set up.so you dont get a confirmation page. I ended up with 4,(bogof) and there's a 40 minute cancellation period from the order email, which i missed. Returns were going to cost a bomb. Gave them stinking tp reviews.

OP you can see discussion of this on my dress thread currently running. It’s horrible!

My mum uses a credit card for practically all her spending (especially online) for this reason. I think she just uses her debit card in supermarkets.