Des Blair always tries to buy New Zealand-made products. But moving to the world of online shopping has left him empty-handed and confused.
The retired tradesman and football player from Wellington has become hooked on a craft called diamond painting, it's a kind of paint-by-numbers using tiny sparkly dots that stick to the canvas.
He came across a site called diamond-painting.co.nz. It had an impressive website, showing off a wide range of well-priced products and giving guarantees of customer satisfaction but best of all, it described a shared love of crafting and gave out it's address in South Dunedin.
"That's why I went to that site, to spend my money in New Zealand," he adds.
Des had already bought from other local diamond painting sites and received his products within a few days. But after four months of waiting, his order from www.diamond-painting.co.nz hadn't arrived. He'd had one email immediately after making a payment which confirmed his purchase of $99.98. It was the email address supplied on the website as the one to use for customer queries. So he emailed again and again but he's never heard a peep.
Des isn't alone, there are many similar complaints to his on the company's Facebook page, "Total scammers, they can't even reply to emails", "No resolution and no order. Avoid this company".
Complaints were flying into the Fair Go inbox too. The amounts of money spent weren't huge, but the frustration was rapidly mounting. So Fair Go spoke to Netsafe to get more of an understanding of what might be going on.
Sean Lyons, online safety officer, took a look at the website and said the set up reflected a drop shipping site as it describes a base in Dunedin with products arriving from China.
"They don't have stock, they don't have a warehouse, they simply say to the manufacturer in China send this product to my customer."
Nothing unusual there but with this company customers are complaining that their orders haven't arrived, with some waiting nearly a year.
Sean Lyons smells a rat.
"People are ordering from a legitimate looking website but nothing arrives, to me that's a drop-shipping scam."
The website boasts it is No.1 for customer satisfaction. It promises "missing diamond protection". It draws customers in with it's cosy chat about the company's love of crafts.
"We are expert crafters ourselves, we adore cross stitching."
In Sean Lyons' opinion "it starts to smell like ChatGPT wrote the words on the website".
And what of the '.co.nz' domain address? People are often misled into thinking this is evidence of a New Zealand based company but anyone, anywhere in the world, can adopt a '.co.nz' address for their website.
It's left Des confused. He's the first to admit he's not internet-savvy. He arrived in New Zealand on a ten pound ticket from Ireland back in the 1970s and has always been impressed by the Kiwi honesty and generosity he's seen. So while he can accept being misled by a website address, he's scratching his head about the base in Dunedin.
"I don't know but there must be a reprsentative in New Zealand for that company, am I right or am I wrong?"
He's wrong. Fair Go visited the Dunedin address and found it belonged to a classic car importer. They're adamant they don't deal in any arts and crafts but they are familiar with the company. They find themselves frequently having to fend off annoyed diamond painting customers who are looking for their orders. It started a few months back, an employee explained "a lady and her daughter came in looking for their arts supplies" and hasn't stopped "now we see people walk through the gate and we can tell pretty quickly what they're here for".
The news has left Des disappointed. But the rogue online seller hasn't just been bad news for customers, it's also been a factor in putting a genuine Kiwi diamond painting supplier out of business. Vanessa Firmston ran a company with the website address www.diamondpainting.co.nz, so the same name but without a dash in the first word. She told Fair Go that since the new company started selling online her sales have dried up.
"I used to send 5-10 orders out a day but it got to the stage I was only sending one a week and was fielding non-stop calls and messages saying where is my order? It got to the point I didn't want to answer my phone anymore".
The impact was so great she's now closed down for good.
By checking the domain website, Fair Go found that the domain name for the rogue website is owned by Oleg Frizen of Russia. We used the email contact supplied with his domain listing to ask for an explanation of what's happened to the many unfulfilled orders. We had no response to that request or to the many emails we sent to their support email address. And of course, there's no contact number.
The strange thing is, we heard from one customer who had finally been contacted after sending some 30 emails to the company. Not only that but she's also received half her order, a welcome delivery although she's disappointed with the quality of the product. We can't get to the bottom of why one, or possibly a few, customers have had contact when so many have been left with no product and no communication of any kind.
Sean Lyons says despite the slim possibility of goods being received, he believes this is a company that should be avoided. And for any online shopping with a new company, he suggests using the simple trick of putting the company name followed by the word 'scam' into google as this should highlight any bad experiences other customers have had.
Des says he's learnt the hard way but will be better prepared for any online shopping in years to come.
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