Bargain of the year or a scam?

Bad copy: Beware of online adverts that sound too good to be true and contain spelling mistakes. Ray-Ban, for example, never discounts its eyewear online, according to the brand manager.

Bad copy: Beware of online adverts that sound too good to be true and contain spelling mistakes. Ray-Ban, for example, never discounts its eyewear online, according to the brand manager.

Published Mar 3, 2014

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Cape Town - Ray-bans for R253 – bargain of the year, or a scam?

Predictably, many have discovered that it’s the latter, among them Chantal Howse.

She was recently sent a link by a friend to “the Ray-Ban SA site”, advertising huge discounts on Ray-Bans “for one day only”.

“I paid for two pairs of sunglasses – the amount due was R506, with R198 for ‘shipping’, totalling R704,” she said.

But R1 061.80 was instantly whipped from her account.

“My friend did the same and neither of us have got our sunglasses.”

All they got was a “thank you, we appreciate your business” e-mail, stating that their payment was successful. The addresses given were a dead giveaway of a scam: [email protected] and [email protected]

Note the spelling mistake.

Howse intends to apply to her credit card-issuing bank for chargeback.

Thera van’t Hof, Ray-Ban SA brand manager, confirmed that the site in question was a fake, “but a very good one, with art work copied from our site”.

“We’re getting lots of calls from people who have paid for sunglasses, some of them up to five pairs,” she said, “mostly more than the stipulated amounts.

“They had no trouble finding our genuine Ray-Ban SA site after they’d made payment – I just wish they’d contacted us first,” she said.

Ray-Ban never discounted its eyewear online, she said.

As always, if it’s too good to be true… - Cape Times

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