Woman buys dress online for CNY, receives shower curtain instead

Pre-Chinese New Year festivities usually involve buying new clothes to parade around in, but one woman isn't so sure about her festive OOTD this year.

She bought a dress online but received a shower curtain in the mail.

The woman, who only wished to be known as Leong, told AsiaOne she purchased the dress from a store on Shopee. A quick scroll through the store's listings shows only clothing for sale, which made Leong suspect that the distribution centre might have mixed up the packages.

"[The parcel] looked about the right size, about A4 size, but I knew that something was not right because I could feel the plastic rings through the packaging," she recounted, sarcastically calling the shower curtain a "waterproof dress material with free plastic jewellery".

Despite repeatedly contacting the seller, she has yet to receive a reply.

Instead, her request for a full refund was countered by the seller, who offered a paltry compensation of $1. In the screenshots supplied by Leong, the system would have automatically accepted the seller's counteroffer had she not responded in time.

"[They're trying to] sell me a curtain I don't want for $9.77."

She reached out to a Shopee representative for assistance on the matter and has since received a full refund for her purchase. AsiaOne understands that the platform is working with the seller to prevent a repeat of the incident, as well as to improve their processes.

Lately, online shoppers have been receiving items that are rather different from what was advertised, and some are more ridiculous than others.

Last week, a woman paid $98 for a water spray gun meant for washing her car but instead of the actual product, all she received was just a photo of it, which she called "the most ridiculous purchase ever". Fortunately, she received her refund and the seller was suspended from Shopee. 

rainercheung@asiaone.com