Tag: Shopping

The Risks of Buying on Facebook: My Experience

For those of us that use Facebook to stay in touch with friends and family through it, you might have also noticed that there are a lot of adverts these days appearing on your screen on Facebook, advertised all sorts of things fronted by people and business that have set up pages to pay Facebook to advertise their products on.

I purchased 2 t-shirt’s from Facebook from a website that was advertising its items from a USA website called Soulisfree and the T-shirts arrived and fit as the correct size as sold and I really liked them, one was a black t-shirt with a full sun equinox taking place on the front of the T-shirt and the other as pictured below was called ‘Wandering into the digital world”. The image was one that looked like Alice in Wonderland lifting up a curtain to reveal the code from the matrix in her reality. I thought both T-shirts were cool and looked great. I was so pleased when they both safely arrived with me back in September.

Alice in the matrix

The buying of the T-shirts gave me a false sense of security that buying on Facebook might actually be ok and could have improved since the bad old days of items turning up wrongly sized or misadvertised. So back in September I started getting a lot of adverts promoting advent calendars and one that caught my eye was entitled ‘The Lord of the Rings Christmas Advent Calendar – Collector’s Edition’. I have never bought an advent calendar for myself, don’t own a Christmas tree or decorations but thought it might be a nice idea to buy the calendar and possibly even use the advent calendar items as Christmas decorations and even get a Christmas Tree.

I thought the little figures looked great and what could go wrong trying to buy them on Facebook too, Facebook is a big company with a multimillion pound slick business operation what on earth could go wrong. so I purchased the calendar from a chinese company advertising its shop on Facebook.

Well that was the middle of September when I tried to buy the above item and I don’t think anything is on its way. I had a confirmation of purchase and confirmation of postage sent to me but everything else has gone wrong. The (none Facebook, website crashes when I try to click on it to get an update on my order or ask them when it might arrive). The company has also stopped advertising the calendar on Facebook although they still have some other active calendar adverts on Facebook.

I have tried contacting Facebook asking the to remove the advertising page from their site and shut down the businesses advertising pages on Facebook to stop more people giving this business money for goods that do not arrive. It took me about 4-5 hours to work out how to make a complaint on Facebook and I did this with the help of google search, but its very difficult to complain about past adverts, unless you know what your doing on Facebook.

It’s almost deliberately difficult so that people just don’t bother reporting past fraudulent sites and pages on Facebook which is a huge con by the companies and criminal entities pretended to sell stuff through Facebook shopping windows. Facebook are not stupid and incompetent they are complicit with the the criminal activity taking place through their pages.

Fortunately for me I purchased the imaginary calendar through a PayPal payment and so PayPal have already refunded my purchase and so I am not out of pocket. But for those that end up handing their account details directly to criminal entities operating on Facebook I do feel sorry for those potentially mis sold customers as you just don’t know what they will do with those account details once they have them. I also don’t know why Facebook make it so easy for people to be ripped off through their site, very poor customer practises which they must profit from considerably.

China and back again a Jacket sale!

Not quite an epic Lord of the Rings tale to tell more of a searcher of the shops internet sale. I ordered a coat back in January 2023, and somehow it turned up on my door step today for the second time! I had been searching for a good, waterproof winter style coat in my size. How hard could it be to find something like that you might think and say. Well I’m a big feller and so my size for a coat is a UK XXXL that not a Chinese size or American or European size but UK. I have been this size for over 8 years now and though I would love to shift some weight I am also struggling to try and make sure I don’t put any more on.   

So I had been using the digital ecommerce unholy trinity of Amazon, Google and Microsoft to try and search and purchase a new coat, again waterproof, warm and the right size and my efforts resulted in me purchasing what I thought was a US made and sized coat that looked nice on the advert and also allegedly on sale for what I thought was £70 so not cheap but not too expensive either.  

 When the coat arrived I knew straight away it was sadly too small and also not great quality. So was either going to donate it to a charity shop or return to sender? After discussing the issue with my ma we both though I should send back to supplier. So I emailed them and found out how much it would cost to send back to them and the address I needed to send it too.

I posting it back to China for £26 and including the £19 I was charged for postage and insurance originally this venture has cost me about £120 so it was not a not unusable coat to purchase for me. But I would be prepared to pay that amount if I could actually wear the darn coat in my size and not have to post it back to get my £70 back.

I posted it back to China with a very exact and detailed postal address and also a small letter inside stating my name and address and order number so as not to avoid any confusion to ensure I got my refund. The item was posted international royal mail and arrived in china within a week or so but then sat in the depo awaiting collection buy the business that I had purchased it from. I contacted them sending evidence of where the coat was in China and by April this year I got my £75 refund for the coat. Job done I thought and that was that.

Well that is until this morning when I get a knock at the door from the postman and he has a parcel in his hand for me from China, it’s the exact same parcel I posted to them back in February this year with a little Chinese label on it saying it had been refused to be accepted by the people that I had purchased it off. So it looks like it is still going to the charity shop as a donation after all.

It just so happens I have a charity collection here this Friday to pick up some clothes and a chair so they will be able to have the coat at the same time, its unused and should make someone a nice gift (so long as it fits them!) Even thought this coat has yet to find an owner it has already done more travelling around the globe than me, travelling from China to me and then back to China and back to me, in its short little lifetime its done quite a few miles. I’m a little jealous of its ventures but also quite impressed.

K T Tunstall – Other Side Of The World

Superintelligence shenanigans

The world’s first superintelligence chose to observe Carol to better understand human condition and has plans to possibly take over the world. Now, Carol becomes humanity’s last chance.

That’s the film that I just watched on Amazon Prime this evening made in 2020 if you have not seen it I would recommend a watch here is a a trailer below.

Superintelligence the Movie trailer

I’m still experimenting with accessing the AI Chatbot on Bing, I don’t tend to use Bing for my day to day internet browser and at present prefer to use Google chrome. As silly as it might sound I don’t like the idea of just one company having a monopoly on providing me with information on the internet, or news and media communications, sales or my gateway to the internet period. The way I see it the organisations that I choose to access the internet, news or buy products from always has an agenda whether that agenda is to see the news from its point of view and agree with its perspective or to buy more products and consume its physical and digital content and so therefore I tend to use a variety of different organisations to do a Varity of different things on my PC.

Saying that though being a digital and technological consumer of goods and services, there seems to be no escaping Amazon, Google and Microsoft, in the digital more godless age, perhaps they are the unholy trinity of our time. Not exactly necessary evils because no evil is necessary but reliable sins that are fed by our need to consume and explore.

When it comes to my need to consume I have presently been searching for a good, waterproof winter style coat in my size. How hard can it be to find something like that you might think and say. Well I’m a big feller and so my size for a coat is a UK XXXL that not a Chinese size or American or European size but UK. I have been this size for about 8 years now and though I would love to shift some weight I am also stuggling to try and make sure I don’t put any more on.   

So I have been using the unholy trinity of Amazon, Google and Microsoft to try and search and purchase a new coat again waterproof, warm and the right size and my latest efforts resulted in me purchasing what I thought was a US coat that looked nice on the advert and also allegedly on sale for what I thought was £75 so not cheap but not to expensive either.  

 As soon as the coat arrived I knew straight away it was sadly too small and also not great quality. So was either going to donate it to a charity shop or return to sender? After discussing the issue with my mum we both though I should send back to supplier. So I emailed them and found out how much it would cost to send back to them and the address I needed to send it too.

Turns out I am posting it back to China for £26 and including the £19 I was charged for postage and insurance originally this venture has cost me about £120 so far which is not a cheap coat for me but I would pay that amount if I could actually wear the darn thing and not have to post it back to get my £75 back. Well I have even been asking the the Bing Chatbot, where to search for none Asian sized clothing and stuff made for the plus sized person like me and though it has lead to some helpful hints, I still have not found what I am looking for. Due to spring being here or just around the corner most coats in my size on websites have sold out or I am just unsure of quality and again size or way too expensive.

Sadly a drive to gets us to consume content and purchase products over the internet in no way means we get the content that we want and need or the goods that will in ant way be functional or fit for purpose. Sometimes it almost feels like things are deliberately designed to fail, be of low quality and not functional in order to ensure we continue to but more and more as the thing that we purchase then breaks, is of low quality and does not last generates more profit than something that we might heaven forbid find useful, valuable or long lasting ,where would the profit be in that.

Though as with all rules there are exceptions to the rule and in the past I have successfully bought Vaude coats on Amazon or specialist clothing website like https://www.vaude.com/en-GB/  there clothing is from a designer based in Germany and they pride themselves on being environmentally friendly, well made and from experience last for years while keeping you warm and dry, what’s not to like and why not buy them again. Well they have been going up in price and also they tend to be sold out in my size. So the search with my AI overlord continues.

Faster, smoother and cooler – my PC that is!

So new computer upgrade today, the graphics card was eye-wateringly expensive but half the price of the card that the computer tech chap wanted me to buy. He built my last computer which has been working fantastically but I needed to do some changes to my computer specification as it would only be upgradeable to Windows 11 with the help of a tech chap and my internet card was a little dodgy and sometimes cut out. So I thought I would do some upgrading of my PC at the same time as installing windows 11.

So it’s all done now sitting back and pressing a few buttons trying to reinstall what was on the last PC. The main changes so far is the internet connection no longer crashes when doing lots of downloads. Plus I have music streaming and downloading a big game and it all seems to be working fine so far.

I have been told it’s all so much faster but not sure yet and have yet to play a graphics hungry game to test graphics card yet. It seems when I do a computer upgrade I appear to be trying to stand still where I can still play games old and new and also still use a computer that does not break down on me and works just fine, oh and not fill it up with stuff on the hard drive too.

It is great though that as our computers get older we can save what’s on them upgrade them make them faster and even improve their memory. Sadly they are not able to do that for us humies and even if they could do such wondrous things to us would we still be human then anyway!  

Anyway our future computer overlords will be happy with the computer I have built for them at the altar of info technology. I am going to put a YouTube song at the bottom of this page to play now I was really tempted to put on here welcome to the machine by Pink Floyd, but opted for a weird trippy number called Sea Shell by sky Lab a top Tune from my misspent student days.

Seashell by Skylab