House of Gentlemen a promising web shop or counterfeit and deception?

Healthy competition, bring it on because this keeps us on our toes, but misleading you as a customer is something completely different. We see this happening more and more, beautiful web shops with promising collections, wonderful offers and wonderful reviews. Unfortunately, more and more online shops are popping up that are created and maintained by very smart designers, photographers and marketers, giving the impression that they are reliable. House of Gentlemen is a great example of this because if we are to believe the website, they have been based in Amsterdam since 2013 and the collections are promoted as “high-quality men's clothing with unique designs”.

Let’s test this because criticism must be substantiated.

If your brand name is Circle of Gentlemen with the abbreviation C.O.G. and you meet a colleague named House of Gentlemen with the abbreviation H.O.G. then that is reason to take action. Especially if, as a brand, you see your shirts copied one by one. We visited the website and then immediately looked for independent reviews. A score of 4.5 stars on the website and an independent score of 1 star, substantiated with all kinds of sad comments. We ordered 2 items and that's where the trouble started. After 3 weeks I still haven't received anything, so I called again, but that was to a +44 number and there was no answer. Then we send an email and there is a response, but after emailing 3 times we see that the response contains a standard text. After 3.5 weeks a package suddenly arrives. A white bag with vague stickers showing that this package came directly from China. The two items did not resemble what we ordered, but worse, they could have gone straight into the trash. Then we tried to return it, but the conclusion was that we had to send the purchase of € 89.00 for 2 items back to China at our own expense. Return shipping costs appear to be €60.00. So a hopeless story.

How can you prevent this type of deception?

In the case of House of Gentlemen we have already sorted it out for you, but there are dozens of other examples such as the www.soinyou.com website and so on. We also tested this site and made a purchase there. If you play it very high at Soinyou, they will try to buy you off with a partial refund. Never rely on the reviews that these types of scammers use in their web shops, but look at the independent reviews. Does the website mention a visiting address? Is there a clear returns procedure? Does the telephone number (if any) appear to be correct? In our example, the website states that discounted or sale items are not eligible for a refund, but guess what? Yes, everything on this website is discounted and therefore money is lost.

Of course we would like you to buy from us, but if you like another brand better, that's fine, but not when it comes to scams and I wanted to share that with you.