careful consumer

The store of electric appliances and electronics in Finland called GIGANTTI has outsourced their delivery and installation service to digitohtorit. The latter were supposed to deliver our new TV yesterday late evening between 19:30 and 21:00. 15 minutes before 21:00 we started worry so we tried to contact digitohtorit via phone. One number was not operating outside working hours. The other one that was 24/7 costs 1,70+ euro per minute. After some reluctance I called. A young man answered after some time of ringing. He straightforwardly said that he was basically not working at that time and that he could not help me find out the whereabouts of our TV. NOBODY called to warn us of any delay, or to reschedule. GIGANTTI is hard to reach for support especially to English speakers, and digitohtorit (plural for doctors) have no cure for my problem. It feels like our TV has got stolen and nobody cares! Thanks for nothing digitohtorit!

If one is totally oblivious to the environmental disaster fast fashion causes then sure go ahead and buy from ASOS! BUT be aware of their: 1) poor quality of products, 2) their use of overseas labour in possibly precarious conditions, 3) their constant discount codes that may see you waste your money before you even notice it, 4) their refund policy that makes sure that the buyer loses. Example: I rarely buy from ASOS but wanted a light pair of shorts for holidays. That's all. So after looking through ASOS app I saw a pair on discount. I ordered it in what I know to be my size. I received the shorts only to try them on and see that the waistband although elastic was far too tight for me. It was obviously wrong. I returned them the next day. I expected a refund also of the delivery costs. Nope! I received the refund but is was 5 euros less than what I had spent. So, I didn't get the shorts I was hoping for due to the inconsistent sizing of ASOS items, plus I wasted 5 euros just for trying them on at home in Helsinki! Imagine how much money they make just from returns and keeping small money from each refund like mine. Sure delivery is not free but we are talking about big companies having contracts with other big companies like DHL, Postnord, UPS, and so on. I feel like I have being punished for not keeping the shorts that were too tight! If you don't care about sustainable fashion, at least care for your money! I was ready to be flexible with my environmental principles (sorry to say) but wasting my money like this means the end of my dealings with ASOS. A terrible terrible company like all the fast fashion companies. My suggestion: invest on second hand at real shops with real people where you live! Goodbye ASOS!

Chrono24 is a very useful platform if one is looking to buy a watch. The one star I take away is due to their mediocre website as far as user experience goes.

Complete shopping jungle. I had purchased an item after asking the seller about its condition. I offered to pay before receiving the item, as it is often required in Tori. I received the item and it was not in the condition the seller had confirmed in his messages. I contacted the seller to complain. Three times I reached out to him and he never responded. Then I contacted Tori and they took NO responsibility. At another occasion, a seller refused to meet with me so that I could try on a jacket she was selling. It would had been the best way to know if the jacket would be suitable for me. We lived in the same city and such a meeting would have not been unheard of. Not only did she decline but she actually became verbally abusive. This kind of bad attitude culminating to verbal bullying has happened to me twice in Tori. And of course I have also met lovely people. But Tori itself provides no protection from the rotten apples out there. And btw do not expect civility and politeness from most Tori sellers! There is no politeness code of conduct in Finland. A jungle!

Another jungle that works very nicely for the company and poorly for the clients. Everyone of course is looking for bargains in VC. The prices are originally inflated as buyers expect discounts, even very steep discounts. VC allows for requesting 30% discount on the asking price of a listed item but at the same time VC also pushes sellers to lower their prices if their items don't get sold asap. I have seen items that were originally for sale for 500€, getting sold for 150€ or less. VC is whistling blissfully with a flat 15€ commission from any sale up to approx.150€ and percentages for sales above 150€. So if a seller has let's say listed a nice but non-signé leather belt for 60€ it is likely s/he will actually sell it at around 20-40€ which means that s/he would barely make a profit of 5€ which doesn't worth the trouble at all if you consider handling and shipping. One would do it for the fun of it, but VC makes the serious money, not the average seller. VC is also replete with professional sellers who don't sell items from their wardrobes (2nd hand) but merchandise stock (items still with tags). These professionals probably also make some good enough money. What is attractive at VC is the seer volume of items on offer. But bear in mind that if you pay 25€ for a silver ring that you really liked and waited to get on discount from let's say the 100€ it was originally listed, that does not necessarily mean you got a real bargain! The ring might in close look seem worth less than 25€. VC charges extra for quality control and if you end up with an unwanted item ... bad luck! You may relist it for the money you paid and commission-free .... BUT it is likely that nobody will buy it for what you payed; everyone will want a discount! So VC does you a BIG favor! no?

Almost impossible to get customer care when you need it. Sellers with auctions may cancel a purchase if they don't like the outcome and give any silly excuse. It just happened to me yesterday and I am still very upset about it. My money is refunded but not the energy and time I wasted nor the joy of purchasing a watch just to have it taken from me ... just like that!
Ebay has as clients both sellers and buyers and it is a jungle. The quality of many products even from EU sellers is dubious. A product made in China is sold by EU sellers many times its price from Chinese sellers. No guarantee in transactions.

Hi! I decided to download the app when I was looking for a party shirt for myself. I found something that in the photos looked very nice: velvet corduroy in mustard/gold color with small black animal print. Perfect for party I thought and payed the 85€ asking price. In one week I received it. It arrived inside two plastic bags. The shirt itself looks sooo cheap! Made in India "responsibly" which I guess should justify the hefty price tag. What else will they come up with??! This goes back asap and will I keep you posted on the refund. But why do I give 2 stars to Zalando.fi when it is clearly the manufacturer's problem. I think that an online shop with great discounts has products that costumers will love to keep. So making the shirt look nice on the photos, in this case, didn't help at all because what I received was really disappointing. This shirt should honestly be no more than 30€ ... not 85€! Zalando.fi as all online retailers milk us profusely providing cheap fast fashion in the guise of something more, something else. That has been my zalando.fi experience so far and I won't be returning.

Hi! In September my therapist told me that I should try "listening" to an audio self-help book. She suggested to try the audible app that gives a free trial which I could cancel if the audio book version didn't work for me. I am not IT savvy but after a few minutes of trying I managed to get the free trial. I got the book and listed to it for a few minutes. It really didn't work for me. It was a quick decision to cancel my membership... or so I thought. Only yesterday I checked my credit card statement and I found out that I was charged approx. 14€ for my audible membership! I immediately look for help from the customer service of audible and through a chat service I managed to connect with someone. The assistant let me know that the billing address I was giving didn't match the one registered in my account and insisted I should send an email to audible.uk. I was trying to explain to her/him that the billing address cannot be different but maybe it was misspelled due to the Finnish alphabet that uses hyphenations. Nope! it didn't work, whatever I was writing in the chat I could feel the resistance to help, or to make the extra effort. So, I started checking my "account" with audible. After renewing my forgotten password I managed to enter my audible.uk account. There I could see no registered billing address BUT my credit card was there and I could not edit or delete it! With my account open I tried to chat again with an audible assistant. This time I was in luck. The person (from far far away I imagine) informed me that the account that charged me was with the audible in USA. I had not cancelled my "subscription" and even though had not used the app and even had deleted it promptly after trying it from my phone, I was still charged. And not only that, but without a prior notification. Yes! I am that naive! The assistant assured me that s/he would cancel my account and refund me. Strangely enough my audible.uk account is still there although I am not supposedly a member. But then why is it active? I tried to find a function to close that account and I could not find any. I tried the "help" but it gave no suggestion about closing an account. Has this mess been going on because I have an Amazon account? I hate it and wish I could close my registration in that bloodsucker ... but it's the only "shop" I can occasionally (rarely I should say) buy some specific shoes that fit me aging feet. So! the moral is: don't trust the free trials and possible buttons that say "cancel membership" or whatever, in apps, especially those owned by Amazon. I guess apps get a lot of money that way from unsuspected people. And while individually it may not be big amounts ... if there are a few thousands misled around the world ... do the math!

I have a list of favorites in my YOOX account. Almost daily I check to see if any of those items have been discounted further. I have noticed that the prices fluctuate considerably. Many of the items I have selected are the last ones. So, how does it happen that their price fluctuate? For instance, when YOOX announces an extra sale, I see that in my favorites, some of those items that are within the discount promotion all of the sudden appear with higher prices. Doesn't this make the promotion false? I would imagine so.
But nope! YOOX maintains otherwise:
"Kindly be informed that the price of all products included in our online catalogue are subject to possible variations and updates as stated in our Sales Conditions.
We would like to inform you that prices may vary for different reasons, such as stock availability for item size and colour. We confirm that all prices conform to catalogue prices as decided by our retailers.
Therefore, we kindly invite you to always make sure you are seeing the updated product price by deleting browser history, cache and cookies before submitting your orders.
In case any further doubts about product prices, kindly contact us directly by sending an email including the product code as seen on the product page and some screenshots of the price possible mismatches."
So, they are asking me, to play the detective all the time and prove their malpractice of pricing their merchandise. Well! if they payed me I would. As it is I only write this review. Not that it will make a-n-y difference to them. I had heard about amazon using those algorithms to adjust prices and now I am convinced that such algorithms are also used by YOOX. Someone said anything about customers' rights?

While I have considered purchasing from VC hundreds of times, I have only purchased from them 3 times. In this 3rd time which is still in process, I became aware of yet another weakness of VC. There was this designer's wool pullover that I have singled out for some time now. The seller discounted generously, I made an offer and got it. I was satisfied. By pressing the BUY button the monetary transaction between me and VC took place immediately. Then I started getting those infrequent notifications about the seller posting the item, VC receiving it, and the last one was about my pullover going through quality control. This is a service that recently VC has cooked up supposedly to reassure buyers that we don't throw away our money. By accident I clicked a button in the VC app and found myself in the "workshop" of the quality control. There I could see the experts' verdict: the seller described the item to be in "very good condition", but apparently there was a discoloration in the front that the seller had kept secret. This made the experts decide that the pullover was only in "good condition". Seeing that I realized I had unknowingly bought a defected item. There was a button giving me the option to cancel my purchase. I clicked it. The only thing that happened was that I was taken to my own account page where I could do nothing more. So, for two days, maybe even 3, the VC staff knows that the seller has misled me and that the pullover I bought in good faith was not as described in "very good condition". My money has already passed to their accounts, while I am waiting to hear what is next. Will they give me my money back and expel the seller? Will they send me a pullover I won't be able to wear? The VC app is a disaster that most often than not offers functions that don't work at all or not properly. Disastrous is also trying to communicate with VC. So, you see dear fellow consumers, things are not so rosy when in the name of profit the necessary investments are not made. We may think we get bargains but any reasonable person should wonder about it. I will give VC the benefit of a doubt and update this review to let you know what eventually happened.

UPDATE (5.10.19): VC refunded me my money as soon as I logged in on my account on my PC and cancelled my order. Their app didn't allow me to do so. Nevertheless, immediately after cancelling my order the process of my refund started. Glad to report about this development. VC has many issues to tackle; my ungratefulness isn't one of them.

It is so unfortunate that their online system is so often malfunctioning! It's unfortunate because their offers are sometimes good. I just now tried to purchase some hair products. I was proceeding with the payment, added my credit card details, and then nothing! An error page telling me that some field was wrong! Stupidly I tried again! the message this time in Swedish was "var god försök igen" in English "please, try again". I gave up and called my bank! Guess what! Because I did everything correctly from my side both payments were processed by my credit card provider and were reserved for Campadre.fi although Campadre.fi didn't confirm the transactions. In other words, now the two payments for goods I will never receive rely on Campadre.fi. I don't think that they will cheat me BUT the fact that my bank now requires that Campadre.fi contacts them in order to cancel the reserved payments is outrageous. I should not have tried again to place the order after the first inexplicable failure. So disappointing to waste my time and energy like this!
My conclusion: if an error page comes after you have proceeded with a purchase and entered your credit card details... don't be stubborn like me! Even if the online system of the seller advises you to "try again" just don't try again. You may end up paying multiple times for goods you would not receive.

Hi!
I have purchased twice from CAMPADRE.
The first time the product arrived fine. The second time the product arrived damaged. After a chain of emails to figure out what to do I was told that after sending back the product I would get a refund. The refund arrived in a few days. I was disappointed that they could not replace the damaged product with a new one. This experience wasn't a total disaster but certainly a waste of my time and energy.
BUT here is something interesting I discovered.
I was checking CAMPADRE and found an offer on a watch by the brand Rotary that I liked. The asking price was 255€ from supposedly 600€ with no shipping fees! This seems like a BIG bargain, doesn't it?
BUT then I very quickly checked the brand's website and found out that in their website rotarywatches.com I could buy the exact same watch for 310€! The shipping cost would be at approx. 25€ within Europe with FedEx. This means that from the brand's own website I could buy the exact same watch for 310+25=335€; more than 255€ but much less than 600€!
CAMPADRE claims that their reduction on the price of this specific watch was 58%! But it is obvious from my brief online comparison that their price reduction was in reality much less. CAMPADRE can claim of course that it is not their business to check their retailers' prices but this does not make any sense to us consumers as it is misleading us.
I am glad that CAMPADRE exists but my suggestion to consumers is to always double check that their reductions are real. I have just sent them a complaining email about this watch and its alleged price reduction, but I doubt that they will change their marketing because of it. To my experience most online retailers use this kind of methods of creating the illusion of bargains where there aren't any really - and why should CAMPADRE be an exception.
I just thought to share this situation that might make some of you to be more careful, and maybe a bit more demanding online consumers. Best regards and good shopping!