Menu
Login
In February of 2022, I got scammed by the site smgl.org. I purchased about $200 worth of sterling silver jewelry their site and they said it would take about 2 months to make my order. It looked like a reputable site, with nice photos, store policies that made them sound trustworthy, a chat box, and videos about their manufacturing process that made them sound like a real business.
Two months passed, and I asked about my order - it was difficult to get a response and when I did, the answers were evasive or I just got ignored. About 3 weeks later, a small package arrived at my house and upon opening it, my heart sank, as the jewelry looked NOTHING like the photos on their site, smgl.org. The jewelry on their site looked polished, refined, well-made. The jewelry I received was crude, used the poorest quality stones, and were even shaped differently and had different proportions compared to the site photos. What I received was like a poor "approximation" of what was shown on their site. Not to mention - parts of my order were missing.
When I sent them photos comparing what I received to their site photos, I was ignored. I emailed them and sent messages through their chat no less than 8-10 times. When I looked to see if I could ship the jewelry back to them (they are located in India), I found out that the USPS prohibits the shipping of silver jewelry to India. These scammers at smgl.org knew exactly what they were doing - they knew that they could send me whatever kind of JUNK they wanted to and there would be no way for me to return it.
I then started a dispute with my credit card company, Citicard, which gave me a "conditional credit". They then contacted the merchant, who responded with this: "We have sent the items as per the best quality of our factory that we sell all over the world and never have a problem with quality issues. The customer claims that there is problem with overall items which seems more like a issue related to not liking the items but the items are same as described and handmade in our factory. Maybe customer is expecting machine made good which we don't sell. If the client is still unsatisfied, we can provide full refund if the client agrees to send back items on his/her own expense."
Upon receiving this bull$#*t non-response from the merchant, Citicard reversed the conditional credit they gave me.
This was NOT and issue of machine vs. handmade quality - it was that I received items that looked of far inferior quality and even differing in appearance from what is shown on their site, smgl.org.
If you are are small retailer, like I am, looking for new wholesalers to start a business relationship with, do not try using this company - you WILL be sorry. You may as well flush your hard-earned cash down the toilet or blow it up at your next 4th of July party - at least it'd be more fun.
