There’s a very guilty pleasure that all college-aged girls share: online shopping.
It’s quite scary how one minute your using an online thesaurus for a term paper and the next thing you know you’re eight pages deep into Urban Outfitters sale section. What’s scarier is how your computer has your credit card information saved, making the checkout process effortless and even painless. But the scariest … being conned by a seemingly authentic clothing website.
It’s a pretty hopeful feeling seeing that your $10 bathing suit order is being processed from that sketchy website you stumbled upon at 3 in the morning. But that feeling fades as your order is being processed for weeks … and weeks … and weeks.
Coming to terms with the fact that you probably will never get that little bargain is pretty frustrating. Tracking down these items and getting a refund is close to impossible, but VALLEY is here to help you avoid these websites at all costs! (Literally.)
FashionNova.com
It really was too good to be true. FashionNova is known for it’s shockingly low prices and surprisingly good quality, but recently, attention has been brought to orders coming in weeks late, or even worse, never coming at all.
According to SiteJabber, a website specifically made for reviewing online businesses, FashionNova has a four-star rating. Although this sounds pretty trustworthy, it has 2,517 five-star reviews and 1,918 one-star reviews. So really, buyers are pretty evenly split on their opinions of FashionNova.
Our consensus: shop at your own risk.
Zaful.com
With spring break quickly approaching, not only are you blocking Gumby’s phone number and deleting GrubHub, but you’re obviously looking to get new bathing suits for cheap prices.
For most girls, websites like Zaful sound like the perfect bargain, and not to mention they have a pretty nice selection to choose from too. But when it comes to online ratings, Zaful is coming in dead last.
Not only is Zaful not a BBB-accredited business, but it also receives an F rating from the bureau. About 600 users gave Zaful the lowest possible rating on SiteJabber, explaining they had issues with quality, shipping and getting in contact with the seller.
Spare yourself the trouble and put the 50 bucks worth of bathing suits toward spending money for your spring break excursion.
Boohoo.com
With sorority recruitment recently coming to a close, many girls are finally receiving the clothes they had ordered months ago for rush.
Boohoo is a no-brainer: 379 out of 570 reviews on SiteJabber gave this site one star. Users reported that the Boohoo was extremely unhelpful when it came to customer service and rarely gave refunds to items never received. Those who did receive their clothes warned future buyers that they should expect the quality equivalent to the price they paid.
Our advice is to spend the extra money on sites like Missguidedus.com, Lulus.com and Tobi.com and receive better shipping, quality and customer service!
Have any online shopping horror stories? Tweet us @VALLEYmag!
