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.

Almost everything for sale online by 'small businesses' these days is Chinese imports drop shipped by sellers pretending to be artisan or whatever. A dead giveaway is the ones saying they are closing down, it's a tactic. If you are ever unsure, go on temu and search for the item you're looking at and chances are you'll find it for 1/4 of the price. The clothes are usually on Ali express using stolen images and copied patterns.

You've been given a lot of advice about avoiding scams OP but in case no one has mentioned it, I always recommend checking the returns policy when buying online, even from an established brand. You are always taking a risk when buying online. If they exclude return rights completely or for "sale"/"final sale" items, that is illegal. Legally, return rights can only be excluded for a limited number of products (such as perishable or personalised goods).

The other things to watch for is complex processes / approval required for return requests (this is against the law - within 14 days you are entitled to notify them you are returning items, that doesn't need approval) and expensive return shipping fees (not against the law but always check what they are before buying and if the website is unclear, at least check the returns address - if it's outside the UK it's going to be expensive).

I just don't buy from certain websites because of these issues, which I see fairly regularly.

(I'm a consumer protection law specialist)

The Scam secrets programme was suggesting that the main aim of these sales is to get your identity and other information, rather than the actual money from the scam. When you request a refund they may ask for more information about you, so I would be careful about it. It's worth listening to the episodes other people have flagged up.

The other things to watch for is complex processes / approval required for return requests (this is against the law - within 14 days you are entitled to notify them you are returning items, that doesn't need approval) and expensive return shipping fees (not against the law but always check what they are before buying and if the website is unclear, at least check the returns address - if it's outside the UK it's going to be expensive).

Does this apply to companies outside the UK though? If you buy from a business located in Greece, China, Australia is the transaction not regulated by the laws in that particular country? (Not doubting you, just interested) Also these Chinese shitty dropshippers just don't care about being legal or not legal as the Chinese authorities are not interested either.

Yeah so many ‘boutiques’ online and small businesses are just massively priced up clothes from Ali express 😫

We have this in Ireland too. ☹️
Closing down sale and the boutique has an Irish name.
Many people have been caught out.
We have a well known phone in radio show called Liveline here and this scam was featured last year.

Seems to me that Facebook - I don’t know about MN - is awash with too-good-to-be-true offers for clothes etc. purporting to be from U.K. companies, but in reality they’re cheap rubbish from China. Have a look at the BBC podcast - ‘The Knitted Cardigan Scam’ for an example.

If it seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is.

Thank you so much. It clearly says on the page with the dress, "Free 30-day returns". I asked for a refund based on the fact that the dresses are too big. They have asked me for a photo of what arrived, showing the size label, (fair enough) and one of me wearing it, "if possible" showing it's too big. Um, no. But I put it out on the bed and put one of my dresses on top (showing the size) and that theirs is about two inches wider on each side. However, I have also sent a pic of the substandard stitching and gone in hard about misrepresentation, that I believe there is no boutique, etc. Because all I want is my money back rather than them want me to return them for a smaller size. If they don't reply within a week, I'll contact my bank. I'm very grateful for all the advice here.

But.. but... It was founded in London in 2008! There's a London street in the photo! Jessica is going to be so busy with the baby that she won't have time to make the clothes! Jessica's customers are all going to miss her! Free returns!

I wish I'd twigged earlier that there are about 2000 items in 25 sizes.

I had a look at some of the clothes and found them elsewhere, jackets up for fifty quid on Ali express for 12 pound etc 😭

Ha ha, thank you for the warning. I am expecting the worst and she probably will not be able to send it back. And yes, and she saw it on TikTok. Love the Mildred Roper reference

Update - "Jessica" has come back to me and generously offered to send me a smaller size! How kind. All I have to do is send $21.87 for the postage. My emails back are getting shorter: no thanks, the dresses are not as described. Refund please and a print-off returns label as per "30-day returns".
Incidentally, I looked up their email address and the end bit indicates it's a bot. So I might be a bit ruder/use some obscure words next time :)

*"Free 30-day returns", that is.

The image of 'Jessica' is quite clearly AI. I have circled all the inconsistencies. Moreover, if you try to save the image, the file name literally says "GeminiGeneratedImage_mhew7xmhew7xmhew.png".

Sorry they got you this time - it's happened to the best of us.

there are many of these sites on youtube too, ‘regrettably…’ a well dressed middle class middle aged sell spoken well groomed woman smiling as though she is utterly trustworthy, scroll on by

it isn’t just clothes, but accessories too, especially bags and once silk pillowcases from a mother and daughter outfit in the Home Counties apparently, they were dolls pram size and wouldn’t accept returns.

“If it seems too good to be true, it probably is”

Caveat Emptor !!

Thank you for doing that. I hadn't looked that closely, but now you mention it... Also, I see that the sign says 15 years, so if it was established 2009, that baby must be about two by now!

Another clear sign of fakery in these websites is that the clothes are usually shown on headless models; sometimes it's clearly the same model, same pose etc but with a variety of different clothes photoshopped onto the image.

Why do the companies that host these fake retailers not have some obligation to remove them ?

I'm still looking for a dress and a site called Emilia came up. Looks lovely. Has a Union Jack, so deffo UK(!). Couldn't click on the TrustPilot reviews on their website. Same sort of font etc. as Jessica. Found them on TrustPilot, and you can guess the rest...

There are loads.

The Harrington Sisters
Crawleigh London
Emilia Rose (established 1999 it says, website set up 9 April 2026)
Veloire London
Montleigh
York Fashion
Alba Muse

It's getting to the stage that when you google something like "wedding guest maxi dress" you just have to ignore all the sponsored google results as they are all dropshipped crap.

The web hosting companies? Or the people who sell the domain names? Most of them are not in the Uk and not in China either, by the time you'd gone to court, proven they were dodgy, got them shut down, there would be another 6 set up. It's like whack a mole. And besides, who's paying for the legal action needed to get them taken offline?

Made by Jessica is full of red flags.

There are lots of red flags, if its not a vrand known to you irs always advisable to check a few things before orderinh

AI generated images of smiling women
Sob story about closing down
Unusual prices

The key is usually pictures of clothes of inconsistent style. If it was a proper boutique they would photograph all their clothes the same way, in similar places with likely the same model or a small selection of model. If the clothes are photographed differently for each item then it's probably a scam, and they all have a very shein/temu pose about the.

Also a website that's not a .Co.uk. If its an unusual website address (in this case .store) its clearly a scam

Thanks all. Yeah, I'm too trusting! Am soooo tempted by some of the Emila clothes! (You know what they say about intelligence meaning you learn from your mistakes?)

Anyway, they have now accepted that I don't want the dresses made from swimsuit material and Medium being roughly the size of a marquee and have offered me a returns label and refund after the package has got safely back to Hong Kong, which will take a long time. We'll see. If it doesn't come off I'll contact the credit card company.