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In the last couple of decades, several internet companies have sprung up that enable businesses to set up shop online. Some popular examples include Shopify, Wix, Squarespace and Weebly. These companies have flourished as they have simplified the process of setting up an E-commerce store, thus making it easy for businesses to offer their goods to customers across the globe.
Shoplazza is one such company, originating from Shenzhen, China, that caters to mainly Chinese businesses which want to reach online shoppers. Shoplazza was founded in 2017 and has managed to raise millions of dollars in funding.
The company details are quite clear, making it apparent that Shoplazza is very much a legitimate organization. However, the ratings and reviews for Shoplazza.com are extremely poor across various online review portals such as Scamadviser, TrustPilot and Web Of Trust.
Looking at the reviews, we can see that the reviews are not by Shoplazza’s clients, rather by customers who have shopped on an online store created using Shoplazza. Almost all reviewers have the same complaint; they appear to have fallen for bait-and-switch scams run by Chinese criminal organizations. These scam networks heavily advertise on Facebook and Instagram using stolen images, only to deliver low-quality replicas or random dollar-store items.
What these customers don’t realize is that they were not duped by Shoplazza itself. They shopped on scam websites created using Shoplazza’s platform. Such sites are easily identifiable by the text ‘Powered by Shoplazza’ in the site’s footer.
Shoplazza also allows e-commerce stores to be set up for free and these sites have URLs in the format [sitename].shoplazza.com, similar to how free Shopify stores have URLs in the format [sitename].myshopify.com. This leads people to believe that they are dealing with Shoplazza itself and not scammers who are misusing the platform.
Shoplazza’s poor ratings and reviews are not just a result of confused customers though.
While Shopify and other platforms have mechanisms to report and suspend stores that are abusing the platform, there is no obvious way to report dubious Shoplazza stores.
Below is an example of Shopify’s form to report an issue with a merchant. Our experience with this reporting mechanism has been positive as Shopify takes the reports seriously. In fact, our observations suggest that Shopify’s willingness to rapidly suspend fraudulent stores may even have prompted scammers to prefer Shoplazza over Shopify. With that being said, it is a bit unfortunate that reports can only be filed by customers themselves and only AFTER they have been scammed even though it is clear in many cases that the site is a scam.
While Shoplazza has a similar form called the Consumer Complaint Registration Form, it is nearly impossible for the average shopper to find as Shoplazza.com is entirely in Chinese. We also do not have any reports regarding the effectiveness of complaining to Shoplazza. As scam sites have short lives of 1-3 months, the scammers may have already shut their old sites and created new ones by the time any action is taken.
Shoplazza itself is not a scam. However, it is undeniable that scammers are heavily misusing Shoplazza’s platform to create online stores with the explicit intent of running online shopping scams.
This abuse reflects poorly on Shoplazza as an organization, as can be seen from the abysmal ratings and reviews. Shoplazza cannot solely be blamed for scams as there are several big internet companies providing infrastructure to scammers. Nonetheless, Shoplazza needs to take cognizance of the abuse happening on its platform soon and take steps to avoid the brand name becoming synonymous with Chinese shopping scams.
