Legal, but scammy
I ordered an ugly christmas sweater. Looking into details about the sweater had descriptions that it would be good quality and in product specifications were tons of information about how to wash and care for 100% cotton products. This gave the implication that this product too was cotton, but the fact that the product material is simply listed as "Buttery soft fabric with plush" should have made me get that this wouldn't be the case. That's on me. I struggled to find information about where this would ship from. There were indications that it might be from the states, as no other location seemed to be shipped to faster. That's on me for assuming. Later on I found one sentence under returns that returns are to be shipped to China. That would have answered that, but I missed that. That's also on me, but again: Why not be clearer about it? Upon receiving the sweater way after Christmas due to the added shipping time, I immediately saw that the fabric quality is very low. The fabric is very thin, and stated as 100% polyester, which was never truly specifically disclosed. I immediately wrote to GeeksOutfit that I wished to return the product. They accepted that I wanted to return it, but wrote that they were sorry the "high quality" product wasn't good enough for me. Because there was nothing broken/damaged, they required me to pay for shipping myself, and estimated the shipping costs as more than the sweater's value. The question on how they can make money on a sweater when that is the case tells me that a lot of the shipping price is baked into the price of the sweater to begin with. Meaning the actual production value of the sweater can't possibly be more than somewhere around $7-12. To be clear: This is just a theory I personally have and have no proof of that claim, other than that many other polyester Christmas sweaters from China on alibaba are priced thus. GeeksOutfit offered me a 20% discount as an alternative, but clearly I cannot trust that whatever I would try to use that discount for to be an actual quality product, so the discount is worthless to me. Note that I would not care about the quality they sold if they at least were honest and upfront about it. If the sweater product information clearly stated 100% polyester, and more clearly said they were a drop-shipper to Chinese factories, I would consider it my own fault that I ordered something that would likely be what it is. My issue is how it feels like they are being intentionally vague with information they know is unpopular, and hoping that any complaints will be deterred from demanding a reimbursement through demanding hefty shipping fees. That, to me, is a scammy business model, but obviously there's nothing illegal about what they do. It's just in my personal opinion dishonest.