Complaint Review: woodswinebar.co.uk - Shanghai Internet

www.woodswinebar.co.uk is in my experience a scam website claiming to sell Patagonia high quality brand clothing but shipping cheap counterfeit clothes from China which have nothing to do with your order.

On 19th September 2016 my wife ordered some Patagonia clothes from www.woodswinebar.co.uk. Patagonia is a high quality brand name for outdoor clothing and the website purported to sell exclusively Patagonia branded items. My wife order a bra, a pair of hiking pants, and 2 women’s tops. All were the Patagonia brand and all were on offer – discounted by about 60%.

An email confirming the order arrived from:

[email protected]

Subject line was "Order paid successfully notified!" which is not natural English

The email stated that:

Due to the foreign exchange rate, the amount displayed on your statement might be a little bit different from the real price.

Please note "laerpexuk" will be displayed on your credit card statement instead of the website from which you purchased the mentioned product.It's just used for sending bill statement by the seller's payment processor as a tool.

There was no description of the items my wife had ordered within this email. There are so many things wrong already:

- a website supposedly selling high quality brand mountaineering fashion clothes using the name of a wine bar - www.woodswinebar.co.uk is listed as the web address for a business based in Yeovil which recently change hands

- the website sells high quality brand name clothes yet ALL of the items are on offer and all items state 1 DAY ONLY EXCLUSIVE SALE!

- an email order confirmation from an address which has nothing to do with the website

- a payment reference which has nothing to do with the website name - the actual reference came through as "LAERPEX UK FUZHOU CHN". Our credit card was charged on the same day as the order

- no description of the items in the order – an item description is a legal requirement in the UK

- a statement that the transaction amount may be different due to differences in foreign exchange rates. The website loaded in GBP but does allow you to select 4 other currencies (US Dollar, Euro, Canadian Dollar and Australia Dollar). Throughout the order process my wife left the currency as the default £ GBP. Up to the point when you enter your credit card details there is no mention that the goods were being shipped from China or that the transaction will be billed in Chinese Yuan. In fact the exchange rate used for CNY (Chinese Yuan) made the transaction more expensive. On top of that a foreign exchange transaction was charged.

- a website with a registered address on  a residential street in Glasgow (113 Woodhill Road, Bishopbriggs,  Glasgow City, G64 1AS, United Kingdom) in the name of Imogen Crawford with goods being shipped from China!

- the product descriptions feature quirky strange English and very odd phrases which you will not find on the official Patagonia product description - such as:

                - "Guitar picking and a sunset stroll to the ancient granaries"; or

                - "Riding the beach cruiser from yoga to the farmer’s market sounded like a good idea – until the sun broke through the clouds and the heat cranked up"     -

In addition, if you look at the website various links and pages are incomplete - the Conditions of Use, Privacy and Shipping and Returns pages are not yet completed, the Follow US Facebook and Twitter links are not active. In addition, there are basic spelling errors such as "CORPORATION INFORMASJON"

On 5th October 2016 some clothes did arrive from China, but instead of the Patagonia items my wife had ordered the bag contained clothes which had nothing to do with my wife's order:

- a bright pink sports bra mislabelled as Luon Groove Pants - the label was badly printed with incorrect English

- 3 x Abercrombie & Fitch women’s tops - probably fake

The  Return Address was:

Wang Gang

001

No 16.253 Lane HangDong Road

Shanghai MinHangQu

SHANGHAISHI SHANGHAI 201105

CHINA

My wife replied to the order confirmation email to complain that she had received the wrong items.  She received a reply from:

Mill juney <[email protected]> - once again an email address which has nothing to do withh the original website

Mill Juney asked my wife to send photos as proof and offered to investigate

The email ended with the following text:

发件人: [email protected] <[email protected]>

发送时间: 2016年10月9日 6:21

收件人: 3MLJ-103318

主题: 138718      YKF1609192056287830     3MLJ-ii13178-fp79

Not exactly the signature text of a UK based company!

After my wife sent photos showing that the clothes were not what she ordered Mill Juney apologised and offered a partial refund of 15% which she increased to 20% when my wife refused and even suggested that my wife resell the clothes or give them to a friend!

FINALLY and rather sheepishly my wife informed me and I immediately initiated a chargeback with our credit card company – Tesco Bank. Interestingly they applied the chargeback on the basis of counterfeit goods after contacting Patagonia to confirm that www.woodswinebar.co.uk was not a bona fide dealer of Patagonia products. Tesco Bank claimed that they were unable to claim that the goods were not as ordered since we could not supply an invoice stating what we had ordered. Of course we couldn’t as we had been scammed by criminals!

If you Google any of the following details found above you will realise that this is a wide ranging global scam:

-      laerpexuk

-          [email protected]

-          [email protected]

-          [email protected]

-          Wang Gang Hangdong Road  Shanghai

Please avoid!