Unfulfilled Wish

If there was a Dollar Store for the internet, Wish would certainly be it. Cheap, sub-par, sometimes knockoff goods, Wish is the place where you can buy weird stuff and things that end up looking nothing like the images on the site. At the NY Times, Tiffany Hsu and Sapna Maheshwari report on how Wish, once flush with cash, has stumbled so hard they're barely keeping afloat.

There were unbelievable bargains on “bestdeeal9,” a store hosted on the e-commerce platform Wish, including a $2,700 smart TV being sold for $1 and a gaming computer advertised for $1.30.

But none of the offers were real, and Wish knew it.

Employees working on the project repeatedly pushed executives to take down the store, arguing that it was both illegal and unethical, according to three employees familiar with the project who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss company matters. More than 213,000 people made purchases from the store, according to an internal document reviewed by The New York Times, though the document did not say how many received their items.

NY Times

What makes it even worse is Wish would only refund people on these fake orders if they explicitly asked for one. And then it was still a slow process to actually give people their money back.

It's hard to fathom having so much business happening on your site, to the point where you're literally a sponsor on the jersey of an NBA team, and yet still feel the need to scam customers with fake listings and withholding refunds on said orders.

Unbelievable.