25 Red Flags in Online Shopping for a Solar Pump

25 Red Flags in Online Shopping (Download or Print)

Trends of Online Marketplace third party ‘fulfillment’

Sadly, the last few years have led to a proliferation of Chinese shell companies on US made platforms like Amazon and Ebay, hiding behind made-up, “fly by night” brands that are selling low quality products, claiming warranty and support and then disappearing when reviews get bad or they move on to a next unrelated product. Because it’s easier than ever to get online and sell from overseas, many companies pop in and out of Amazon and Ebay every few months – recreating similar listings, changing company names, products, designs – all efforts help bury bad reviews of malfunctioning products, bad support, and avoid needing to support warranties in the future.

Reliable Quality vs. Disposable/International and the impact on consumers

As prices increase across the board, many short-term focused companies that are not in it for the long haul are cutting corners. Some companies try to reduce product costs by lowering quality of materials, staff to Quality Control (QC), less R&D and testing, and shorter warranties – or a total lack in intention to honor them; just making false claims like “3 year warranty” when the company is 2 months old and will be out of business in another 2 months! Sustainable business models have to charge more so they can keep great people, honor warranties, support their customers,and keep jobs in the US. Of late, China is the biggest culprit on Amazon. China makes products for the entire world, both the affluent countries and the poor ones, and so they make products of all quality levels. From Apple products known to be fairly well-engineered, to plastic bins that are designed for the poorer countries and will not last. When those cheap products designed for poor countries end up here in the US, we push back. We want higher quality products that last – not disposable ones that are never reliable. Do we have to pay more for those? Yes. But is it better to pass on to the next generation a great product then to toss it in the trash after a few weeks? Of course.

Why Amazon/Ebay still win even if the consumer loses after 30 days

Amazon wins on every transaction that gets made on their platform. They would rather we buy everything online vs in a store and would prefer more purchases of lower quality things that are disposable as they win each time. To get people comfortable with the platform they make us feel secure by offering a return policy and what feels a little like an “Amazon warranty” as anything that fails quickly, we are usually able to return it and get our money back. Not always, but the idea is that the platform protects you a little. We’ve had lots of people have something come up and aren’t able to install a product in 30 days (Standard Amazon return window) and so they lose their “Amazon warranty” and that is all you’ll get most of the time with products like this – no number to call – just an offshore email address. It’s a painful lesson and one that some learn the hard way. We’re independently-minded so we support freedom to spend money however you want, but it’s hard to hear all these horror stories of late. It’s becoming a bigger and bigger issue. More expensive paperweights and irate customers.

What is a Marketplace Chinese shell company?

While many of us are used to seeing these now, these Shell Companies are just disposable Amazon BRANDS that can be created and junked quickly. That allows companies to sell low with no intention of a product lasting or supporting a customer. That feels like a modern day snake oil salesman to us. We don’t like to see it and we don’t want people to fall into those traps. There are a number of ways to protect yourself from this type of thing and many are listed below but you have good intuition already. If it looks too good to be true it probably is. You get what you pay for. Look out for Shell brands that have lots of capital letters (Like ZHKUO and LIANDU-US which are real pump company examples) and when you click on the store owner or manufacturer it is a totally different business name. They will usually have a mailing address in China, no phone number to call and an intentionally broken email address for support. The “Warranty” page doesn’t load and they have no website outside of the product listing page on Amazon or Ebay. This is a Shell company just setup to set up shop for a few months and then disappear!

Reliable Quality vs. Disposable/International and the impact on consumers

How “Warranty Avoidance” Schemes and Scams work

So many companies on Amazon claim impressive warranties. Wow – 5 years from a company that has been around for a month! Impressive. We all know better but it’s alluring at least to see long warranties. A Warranty is only as good as the company honoring it – and there has to BE a company honoring it. If you can’t find a warranty document, can’t translate it, or something seems fishy – it is. Usually a lack of warranty is followed by bad reviews but a lot of companies delete their online profiles before the bad reviews start coming. Like the Snake Oil Salesman leaving town before the sheriff-in-town’s wife realized that rash never went away from his “miracle cure”. So don’t trust a long warranty from a little Amazon company without even a website. It’s worth less than their misspelling of it in the listing! Some other scams exist here too. There are some sneaky terms that require customers to bring the product in person to get any support. Interesting. Not a big deal if it’s your hardware store down the street but when it’s in an industrial park in China, harder to bring it by for support or a replacement. There are companies that just don’t respond to emails too and that is another form of a warranty scam. We think unless a company has a REAL phone number AND you have proven they ANSWER the phone in advance in good unbroken English, no one should buy from them.

Bait and Switch – False Claims and how the consumer pays the price

This one is pretty self explanatory. It’s easy to see a nice graphic of a pump and imagine its size and weight. Photoshopping a product to look bigger than it is unfortunately is pretty common still. Amazon tries to prevent it but they can’t stop all the violators. Be sure to report any you see as it helps the next person. The content of the text is also a big one. Lots of listings have copy and pasted specs from real companies and don’t know what they are, or if their products have those features. This is ridiculous. The other is extreme exaggeration of performance. Usually these work themselves out with bad reviews, but when companies fold quickly so do their reviews, hiding it from future unsuspecting consumers. Be sure to read over specs and take them all with a grain of salt. Or a few! Watch out especially for materials claimed to be used in manufacturing. Lots of companies claim Stainless Steel for instance and actually use thin coated pot metal that will corrode quickly. Good materials protect your investment. Don’t trust everything you read! If your product doesn’t look identical to the one you ordered or the photos in the reviews of the product show something that is noticeably different, thinner or lighter-weight, beware!

Spray and Pray – generalists, lack of specialty or knowledge of actual products means no help when you need it

We’ve all seen these before. We are looking for a phone charger and we think we find a company that specializes in decent phone chargers – something that will last for at least a few months until we lose it in the truck! So we click into the company selling it and they sell water bottles, soccer balls and Koi fish in Chinese. Huh? There are so many of these now. Generalist shops that sell everything you can imagine in their online ‘store’ and actually don’t know anything about any of it! This is fine for cheaper products and maybe even this phone charger but for anything that we want to last and that we expect to be reliable that we are spending our hard earned money on, we want a company that knows what they are talking about. That means they can support you in choosing the right product, support you if you run into trouble and know that you are getting something a bunch of smart people have thoughtfully designed and carefully packed. We want quality things that are made by experts in their fields. Not generalists that try everything from an overseas industrial park office. In the following section we list all the red flags that we have learned over the years, both from customers and their horror stories, but also with our own knowledge of the industry and how hard it is to build and support great products that last. And deliver exemplary customer support. In practice sometimes you will notice that an Amazon product page has more red flags than not. Great. Move on. It’s not that there aren’t great products on Amazon we just think its a race to the bottom – it’s a race to cheaper and cheaper and it’s getting so offensively bad that a document like this needs to exist now.