My Genius Gift – SCAM
I wish I could say that I didn’t know any better but that is not true. I impulse bought a 500 piece instructional moving model kit of a v-8 motor. It looked really amazing and fun to build. The ad was at he beginning of a YouTube video so it had to be legit. Right?
The YouTube ad link took me to this website www.mygeniusgift.com
Clue #1
If the link is still up, you will see many pictures, a video and even the impressive metal box that the kit comes in. This kit was about $69 USD which seemed like a really good deal for such a high quality looking kit. That of course is scam clue number 1.
Clue #2
I ordered one anyway as there were only 3 left at this discounted price! Scam Clue number 2.
Check First Dummy
AFTER I paid for it, I decided to see if there was a YouTube video of somebody putting it together and of course there was one by Adam Savage of Myth Busters fame. Wow it looked awesome! There was a link to the company that sold it at www.moyustore.com . I was shocked to see that their price on what looked like the identical kit was $699 USD. What kind of sucker would pay $699 when you can pick it up for $69 at www.mygeniusgifts.com? I mean $699 is way to much for a model kit, right?
The Aha Moment
The discrepancy of course launches the after the fact investigation. If a reputable person like Adam Savage links to a site selling the model for $699 and a paid ad on a random YouTube channel sends me to a site selling the identical thing (marketing materials and all) for one tenth of the price, who do you think is lying? One guess.
Is It Worth It
Hope is an amazing thing to me. I was 99% sure I had been scammed but 1% of me thought that maybe these things hadn’t sold well and my genius gifts bout a shitload of them and was liquidating them at an insane discount! When you type it out it sounds even dumber than when you say it in your head. But wait! I got an email saying it had been shipped! Yaaaahooooo, it was real!!
I got it a few weeks later. It was in a box that was way to small. I opened it and found a clump of cast metal that sort of looked like the model I had sent for. Damn scammers!!!
I was going to go through the process of trying to get my money back but it would entail shipping the lump of shit back which was going to cost $40. The credit card company said that as I had a product and they were willing to give me my money back, there was nothing they could do. They said that if I didn’t get what was advertised I could contact law enforcement to look into fraud charges. Of course this was very helpful and the FBI was very happy to hear from me. NOT!!!
I didn’t understand why they sent me anything at all until I found out that it is some kind of loophole to make it quasi legal. The return process is arduous and must be completed within 30 days. Is it worth it for $69? Of course not. There is probably some computer wiz somewhere that crunched the numbers and discovered that 87.3% of victims would just say forget it if the amount was under $70.
What To Check For
If your over 50 and remember going to a store, touching and testing the thing you want and then purchasing it and taking it home the same day then you probably miss those days. Taking a defective thing back was easy too. Aaaah, the good old days.
Now, unfortunately, if you are not buying online from a big brand name store that has physical locations, you need to do research. Let’s look at My Genius Gifts.
Clue #3
If it is not easy to find at least a physical mailing address on the website, it should be a black flag. In the case of My Genius Gifts it is hidden on the “about us” page as a png image (it is a picture instead of text so it won’t be picked up by a search engine). It is:
Labubu Ltd. 97 King Alfred Ave, Bellingham SE6 3HF United Kingdom
Clue #4
Type Labubu Ltd. into your search engine and lo and behold if the first listing that pops up is www.fakewebsitebuster.com. As you can see, it doesn’t take too much effort to find out you have been had.
What To Do Next
Rather than frustrate yourself by trying to get your money back, which will never happen, try to warn others by doing the following:
- Lodge a complaint at the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal
- File a complaint with the payment portal and ask whether the payment can be reversed.
- File a complaint with the Consumer Complaints Forum
- Leave a negative review on review portals such as ScamAdvisor, TrustPilot, OnlineThreatAlerts and SiteJabber
- Report the website to Google using the Suspicious Site Reporter extension for Chrome
- Give a low rating to the website on Web of Trust. You can also install their extension for the same.
As always this is just my opinion. I encourage everyone to think for themselves.