I clicked the link and went to the website, which at the time went to sarisell.com , a professional-looking storefront (they move to a new domain and update the ad every week or two). I thought there was a pretty good chance it was a scam since this is an $800 machine supposedly selling for $300, but I figured I would be reimbursed if it was, so gave it a go. Here's the elaborate part: they took my money and sent me a delivery tracking link at sodopro.com which appeared to be a delivery service like DHL. The link went to a map that showed the product travelling very slowly from Europe, and it would change every few days. Eventually the location disappeared and the status just stayed at "on the way" or something. I filed a claim with my credit card and got the charge removed.
It might not be the case here, but lot of these are drop ship outfits that don’t do any kind of stock check and are susceptible to whatever the actual manufacturer in China is up to. I learned about it buying a moon lamp and it taking over 6 months. When it arrived it was a lopsided 3d printed thing (isn’t that relatively expensive at any kind of scale?)
I also discovered a lot of these drop shipping outlets are the product of get-rich-quick passive income courses that give you a Shopify template to copy. It being passive income is an impulse for allocating zero budget for customer support.
Interesting; that could be what was going on here, although at the price I kind of doubt it. I bought one of those floating moon lamps from a facebook ad too and it came quickly and was pretty great! Guess I got lucky. Mine is not lopsided, but it's definitely a decent 3D print, looks like low-quality stereolithography or maybe some kind of jetting. It hovers about an inch over the base and spins slowly. Great conversation piece; everyone thinks it looks impossible.
Right, mine is the VGAzer one. I'm a little less pleased with it since I realized that the highs and lows don't correspond to lunar topography... the low (thin) areas are the areas that are light-colored on the moon. That way at night it looks like the moon... but the craters aren't physically craters, the maria are high instead of low. Now I'm thinking about upgrading!
If it makes you feel better, I got scammed the same way but in Walmart.com. Bought an espresso machine that was a little too good to be true - the purchase wen through like a normal Walmart.com order. They sent a tracking link through fedex/other - but it was delivered a to a different address in my city. Called up fedex, turns out the company never intended to ship something to me and they shipped an empty (weight wise) box to a warehouse to trick Walmart.
At least after a few days of effort Walmart did refund me and said they were investigating the vendor.
More about this, please!