Beware! The "discounted price" trap has another seller falling for it

Cross-border e-commerce scams are not uncommon, and many newcomers who have just entered the industry have become the "meal" of these unscrupulous training institutions. Recently, many newcomers have been treated as leeks and cut.

There are pitfalls everywhere in the cross-border market, and some sellers are being "scammed"

Recently, many sellers have contacted Entech, hoping to expose the fact that some institutions are using Shopee’s cross-border services to cheat novice sellers.

Not long ago, several novice sellers learned about a series of things related to opening a Shopee store through live broadcasts and other channels, and thus began the process of being ripped off. It is worth noting that although these whistleblowers faced different training institutions, their experiences were very similar, and the materials and rhetoric used by these training institutions in the live broadcast classes were exactly the same.

The whistleblower said that they might have browsed relevant information about Shopee and therefore became the "target customers" of some training institutions.

The staff of the agency contacted the whistleblower and told him that there were free live classes available for them to learn about the platform. During the live broadcast, the speaker "brainwashed" them with good news about the Shopee platform's traffic and sales, and even photoshopped chat records with "Shopee officials", saying that only a few discount spots were left, and guaranteed that they would never need to pay a seller deposit to the platform when selling on Shopee.

The staff said that they would teach the sellers how to run the store. But first, the sellers need to spend 4380-5980 RMB (different agencies charge different fees) to purchase services. Note that these agencies will also indicate in the contract that these services originally cost nearly 10,000 yuan, but now they are discounted . Taking the contract of one of the agencies as an example, its fee structure is the agency fee for the materials needed by the store ( 2000) and the service fee (original price 7800, discounted price 2280). How can you not be tempted by such a discounted price?

In order to facilitate payment as quickly as possible, the staff also dropped a "big news": the agency can sign a "betting agreement" with them to guarantee that the sellers will definitely make a profit every month, at least 5,000; in addition, they will also be given a list of best-selling categories on each Shopee site, and will also attract traffic to the sellers in the early stages .

Just after the news broke that people had paid the fees, the training institution said that Shopee would start collecting a deposit from sellers starting in December, 3,000 per person (Shopee officials did issue an announcement stating that they would start collecting a deposit from sellers starting December 1st).

But before the payment was made, they promised that there would be no other fees and no seller deposit was required. But now they are charging again. Will there be a third, fourth, and Nth payment after the second payment ? So the whistleblower asked the agency for a refund.

However, the agency deducted more than half of the fees on the grounds of various "already incurred" class fees and material fees, saying that it could only refund 2,000 at most. Some sellers refunded less or no refund at all, and the whistleblower had to sign a "refund commitment" to accept the refund . The so-called information package given for the information fee can also be downloaded from the Shopee official website.

The fact that the whistleblower was cheated by different institutions also shows that such companies are rampant in the market. The whistleblower also said that he saw advertisements for training courses from such companies in many channels, including public account articles. Although the companies are different, the content of the advertisements is exactly the same.

Cross-border fraud continues despite repeated bans, and service providers use a variety of tricks

No matter what industry or business, the biggest headache for newcomers is how to get started and how to go from 0 to 1. At this time, training institutions have business opportunities, and the cross-border e-commerce field is no exception .

" Help you open a store, help you make money, one-stop service "

" One hour a day, earn tens of thousands a month, buy a car in half a year, and buy a house in a year "

" Provide professional chat skills to help you connect with logistics, one-on-one teaching, one-time learning, lifelong service "

" We guarantee you will learn and make money "

“ 0 review, 0 deposit, 0 commission, you can promote without spending any money ”

…

I believe that cross-border sellers have seen a lot of such slogans.

As cross-border e-commerce becomes more and more popular , similar training institutions are springing up like mushrooms after rain . Some unscrupulous training institutions also seize the opportunity and target to make a fortune .

As mentioned above, a certain agency sold services under the name of Shopee, and most of the victims were mothers. Note that this group of people is also the hardest hit by fraud in recent years. In the cross-border field, Shopee is also one of the platforms most often advertised as an "official partner" by unscrupulous agencies.

On Heimao, as long as you search for "Shopee", you will find dozens of complaints against the same e-commerce training institution in the past month, and the complaints are concentrated on "continuous charges", "agent operation", "unreasonable refund amounts", "false advertising", etc.

Such cross-border "leek scams" are common, and the means are all to "paint a rosy picture" for novice sellers.

Usually, these institutions create the image of so-called "masters" on social pages such as WeChat Moments , and occasionally publish screenshots of over 10,000 orders a day, with copywriting such as "millions of dollars to be withdrawn" . Or they make up some successful inspirational stories in live broadcasts, such as: students in their 50s and 60s, under the guidance of mentors , earn tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands a month , buy cars in half a year , and buy houses in a year. Throwing out various temptations, novice sellers are easily fooled.

When the novice sellers came to their senses and wanted a refund, these agencies also had a variety of tricks, either deducting part of the fees under various names, or simply disappearing. The editor even found a new trick, one agency even posted a so-called "bankruptcy notice" in a fake manner, stating that due to "poor management and many complaints, the company has been in a state of loss for a long time and has now stopped operating activities." The statement was issued in August, but some sellers complained that the company was still recruiting new sellers until November.

What the official and senior sellers have to say about joining Shopee

Regarding this incident, Shopee also reminded the majority of novice sellers through Yien.com that in order to avoid being deceived and causing financial losses, novice sellers must identify the official entry channels when entering Shopee.

Shopee is not unaware of the frequent incidents of fraud under the guise of official names. It has also issued warnings on various channels many times and reminded sellers to be vigilant.

Shopee provides the following series of "anti-fraud" identification:

1. Some training institutions will forge certificates, impersonate Shopee’s official certified lecturers or cooperating lecturers , and provide fake certificates or plaques such as “Official Best Lecturer” or “Official Certified Best Service Lecturer”. But please note: Any certificate officially issued by Shopee will not start with a lowercase “s” .

2. Some training institutions will create gimmicks through free live courses to induce sellers to pay for courses, but the courses are basically very simple recorded courses , and the so-called official website pages may have been photoshopped. But sellers should note : There is no fee for registering and opening a store on Shopee , and all official partner institutions can also be found on the official website .

3. Training institutions will claim that they can open stores very quickly, open multiple stores with one license, and open multiple sites at one time . However, according to Shopee's official investment policy, one business license can only open one store, and only one first site can be opened at a time .

Yien.com discussed this incident with some senior Shopee sellers. Some Shopee sellers said that they had encountered similar things when they first started Shopee and suffered losses. Most of the stores given by these training institutions are local accounts, which cannot ship goods domestically. However, most sellers do not have the ability to stock up overseas, so in the end these accounts can only be left unresolved.

Therefore, these sellers said: When registering a store, you must try to register your own store, do not rely on purchasing a store , to avoid trouble for yourself later , and do not believe in the so-called " green channel " . Do not pay money without understanding, so as to avoid a lot of troubles when the store is not well run . Spending money can save a lot of time and energy , but don't be treated as a leek.

The gimmick of selling dog meat under the guise of selling sheep meat attracts new entrants, and novices are often easily fooled. It is understandable to want to make money, but everything has a cumulative process. The initial stage is very hard, and it will take market tests to make profits and big money later. Remember: there is no shortcut to success in the world, and you can only walk steadily step by step.

Seller

Cross-border pitfalls