I’ve got an old friend who has a penchant for ordering things that look like “such a deal” from the ads on her internet and social media pages, and then receiving not quite what was pictured. No doubt there are plenty of us who probably have had similar experiences, especially in more recent times where both Quality Assurance and Customer Service are becoming less of an expectation and more of an archaic concept in so many areas.

These situations show up as frustratingly laughable stories and memes, as in “What I Ordered Versus What I Got”. For example, this “3 Ft Tall Chrome Doberman Statue as pictured that someone ordered, and what they actually received.

Or this Barney costume someone purchased and what arrived:

Along those lines, a while back my friend had ordered a lounge chair with sunshade and carry bag that looked like an incredible bargain, but received only the bag, and a bag not even big enough to hold what would have been the chair. She never bothered to follow up on her loss. Another time she ordered what she described as a “cute cat vase” that appeared about ten inches high in the photo, but received a teeny, tiny vase of a couple of inches, the diameter of the hole on top only large enough to fit a straw.

Going forward, you might think those experiences might have been enough to deter her from that great lure of internet advertisements lurking on the sidebar of the screen, but clearly sometimes they are just too good to resist.

Having undergone spinal surgery and ongoing recovery, she was in search of a lightweight, nylon cross-body purse that would not pull down on her neck and shoulders; something which would allow her to navigate hands-free so she could hold a cane and do whatever else. Being the night owl that she is, about 2 a.m. she was scrolling the internet and came across just the thing in one of those ads; shoulder strap, interior sections and zippered inside pocket, affordable, and in an array of colors. Looked pretty good.

The Red bag is the one that appealed to her most. She clicked on the Red option and put it in her “cart”, filled out the order form with all the information and moved on to the payment screen. Once there, she discovered that her choice of RED had all of a sudden been changed to BEIGE. Not wanting Beige, she backed out of the screen before hitting “pay” and tried making the order again.

This situation repeated itself a number of times. She would put the Red purse in her cart, move on to the payment screen, add her billing information and just before she was about to hit the payment button she would see her Red purse had once again been changed to BEIGE. Backing out, she tried a few times without resolution.

Now determined and very much wanting this shoulder bag, she decided to try another company, discovering what appeared to be the identical purse being sold by different vendors, with prices that were similar, maybe a dollar or so different than her initial choice. What was interesting is that all these separate companies happened to have the exact same photo of these shoulder bags in their advertisements.

Once on the website of company #2, she repeated the same process, only to once again discover at the last minute her choice was automatically changed to BEIGE! Despite the offer of a display of colors, in the final screen it always came down to no choice except Beige.

And here it gets a little bit cloudy, because she is not sure how many different companies selling the identical items she may have tried – possibly two but she thinks it might have been three (“Well, you know it was two o’clock in the morning and things get fuzzy”), but eventually her choice of a Red purse actually did appear to remain RED at checkout.

Her confirmation email arrived.

And then another one. And another one. And yet another one! Altogether she received sixteen (yes, 16) confirmation emails verifying she had submitted sixteen individual orders for sixteen individual purses. Next, all these charges immediately showed up on her credit card statement.

How was this possible? She had never hit “pay” at the end, but had backed out of each screen, only confirming the final purchase she had decided to keep. None of these companies provided any contact information on their site – some were written in Chinese. She is not fluent in Chinese.

So she called her credit card company, which was linked to her PayPal account (the method of payment) to explain the situation and cancel all the orders but one. The customer service person was amused, yet stated (perhaps with a sigh) that they would have to go in and cancel sixteen individual orders…. but assured her all would be taken care of.

Within a few days, a largish package arrived at her door. Opening it, she found it contained not one, but three Beige (or what appeared to be Beige) purses inside. Upon inspection, she discovered the interiors did not contain the zippered inner pocket as featured, that the strap was a bit more ribbon-like than expected, and that the lining of at least one of them was unfinished and not especially well made. She put them back in the wrapping and set the package aside.

Almost every day or so thereafter, another delivery was left at her door. She just left them all sitting on her table unopened. When she told me this I could not stop laughing. Showing my age here, I was flashing back to that old I Love Lucy episode where Lucy and Ethel had a job on a conveyor belt at a chocolate factory and the candies kept coming faster and faster.

I was also baffled. “Why aren’t you opening them? Aren’t you curious? Maybe a Red one is inside one of those packages!” Her response was sort of a lackluster “Meh”. Oddly, she seemed to have no immediate interest and said I was more thrilled about it than she was. It would have driven me nuts having all those parcels arriving and not knowing what they contained.

Eventually she had a pile of plastic-wrapped mailers just sitting there. When I saw the photo, the first thing I thought of was that it looked like a shipment of seized contraband. I guess you could call late-night obsessive retail therapy sort of a drug, if you will….

In the meantime and to her relief, her credit card company had reversed all the charges, which was her immediate concern. She asked PayPal (the intermediary payment method between her bank and the companies she purchased from) what she should do with all these wayward shipments. They told her she could either send them all back at her own expense (to China, no less), or she could just keep them. She figured she could probably donate them to a good cause somewhere, or (she joked – or maybe not a joke)“Guess what everyone is getting for Christmas?“

Yesterday I spoke with her and started bugging her a little bit. “So when are you going to open those packages?” She still didn’t seem to have any interest, but I persisted. I suggested we go on FaceTime and virtually open them together. So it began.

First – and most obvious – is that although there were three different companies, they are in fact all the same company. The source of the purses is the same, all are imported. They have the identical shape, colors, straps, little braided zipper pulls. Regardless of which vendor, they all arrived with the identical “Thank You” card inside.

She began by revisiting the first package containing three which she had initially opened. We discovered all three purses inside were actually more of a Gray color, not Beige. After that there was one purse in each package. Beige! Beige! Gray! Gray! Gray! As she opened each one and called out the colors, we found ourselves sinking into what soon became hysterical laughter. It got even better when it turned out one of the packages was an order of underwear she had been waiting for and wondered what had happened to it. She had thrown it aside, thinking it was another purse. Beige! Gray! Gray! Gray! UNDERWEAR! At that point I was laughing so hard that my eyes were streaming. When was the last time you laughed so hard that you cried? It was just too good! We were both almost howling and could not stop.

I kept a little scorecard during the reveal. The first twelve were all Gray or Beige. Wonder of wonders, purse #13 was a Red one. We cheered! RED! You finally got your Red purse! Well, it wasn’t exactly Red, rather more like a Maroon, but still……

Purse #14 also was Red! Purse #15 – another Red!

Finally it was down to the very last purse, #16. Drumroll…….. it was BLACK!

The final score: 8 Gray, 4 Beige, 3 Red and 1 Black. After all of that, she has decided she actually likes the Gray ones best.

I believe she put them all back in their packages and I’m guessing all those packages are still just sitting on the table. Knowing her, they will probably remain there for a while.

At last mention of this debacle, she shared that her credit card company had just billed her again for a few of the purses. I am not sure how that will play out, but the entertaining part of the fiasco has concluded for me with the big reveal. Honestly, it felt so good to just laugh.

I guess there might be a few takeaways from this. Avoiding the potential for misrepresentation can be challenging when engaging in the enticement of online shopping, even when you think you are being careful. I recently dodged one of those situations myself. Beware of those advertisements popping up in your social media pages. Maybe not shop in the middle of the night, especially if you are feeling a little bit “fuzzy”. And it never hurts to check the reviews and scores of the vendor to see if they are legit.

In the meantime, it seems as if (hopefully) one of these purses will provide what she was looking for regarding weight and accessibility. As compensation for the agita, I think she should keep a Gray, Beige, Red and Black for herself – one for every season!

~*~