I ususally do not do not visit Facebook very offen, but yesterday I logged into my facebook account trying to browse around, I found some interesting comment on Wish.com’s page. (As a merhcant, I have followed wish’s page for quite a long time!). Untill then, wish has got 1,202,438 followers for their page. It looked like the Wish APP (Shopping made fun!) is extramely popular on internet or in people’s smart devices. But when I tried to browse the daily post from their page, the comment & feedbacks from fans looked a little anomalous.

Shopping Made Fun. Join over 30 million others that have made their shopping more smart, fun, and rewarding. – That’s what Wish introduce themselves. No doubt Wish is growing fast and with more and more sale volume each month.  It is very commom to see negative feedback for deal sites & Online marketplace, but it is not that commom to see huge negative feedbacks on a business’s facebook page as this.   I checked the page for a while and summed up some of the Complaints， they are most about:

1. Cheap item with poor quality, item does not match display pictures.

2. Clothes size issues, size too small or too large.

3. shipping issue, no shipment or shipping too slow.

4. Bad customer service (No contact or difficult to contact)

As an online marketplace, any of the above issues can easily destroy a business and from their fan page, it looked like Wish have got 4 all. So here comes the question, what’s wrong with Wish? is Wish a fraud at all?

To begin digging Wish’s issues, we should start with how Wish’s business runs.  Here’s some fact I found about Wish:

1. Though they claimed that they have many vendor (Sellers) from all over world,  while most (or All?) of their sellers are from China. And most of their items are shipping from China (International shipping).  Most sellers on Wish comes from another marketplace called “Aliexpress” which is another marketplace belonging to Alibaba group.

2. When customer using Wish APP checking products, they have 2 options:  Wish it or Buy it. The more wish or buy a product gets, the more Exposure the product will get. The review & feedback of a product does not affect the exposure. Plus products with lower price will get more sells.

3. Wish is changing their seller policy frequently to adjust their marketplace rules plus trying to improve customer & business experience.

4. Once a while, Wish was declined by Paypal for selling Imitation （Knock off items) products. Then they decided to have all products inspected before they are live for sell. Also new sellers will be inspected when they are trying to upload new products.

5. Wish holds merchants’ fund until the first day of each month, sellers must provide active tracking information before they got paid.

6. Wish does not supply fulfillment service unlike Amazon. All products are shipped from individual sellers.

It is easy to find out why customers complain about the shipment and product quality. As a matter of fact, there are really very few restriction for selling on wish. When customers set up a dispute or complain about the purchase they maid, wish will make Intervention to the case and refund the payment to customer. But seller has no pulishment except the refund. I think this is the main reason for a mass amount of cheap & Poor quality items on Wish. At same time lots of sellers steal product pictures from other brands but send poor quality items to customers instead.  This matter can be critical for online business. Sellers can do this because there’s no restriction or pulishment.

Many marketplaces have strict policy about Jewelry, clothes and beauty products. Sellers must get approvel before they listing their items for sell, and if there’s issues with products or customers, their selling account should be closed or limited. If Wish really want to improve their business performace, I would strongly suggest they do so.

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If you are reading this post, you should be noted that I wrote above post in April 2015, now it is Jan 2017, how time flies!

It is almost 2 years now, and there’s still new comments about wish rolling in my blog comment.  Looks like wish does not change much.

I have summed up some of the complains or issues customers shopping with Wish, there’s not much “fun” part in it.  We know that there are still  tons of questions or problems out there, but that’s not what I am about to digg, instead I am trying to explain to you guys why the hell those issue happens, hopefully it helps you to decide if wish is the right shopping APP you should install in your phone.

Clothes Size

While we already know that the sellers on wish are from China, generally Asian people wear smaller clothes than people in USA & Europe.   The problem is many sellers set up clothes listing with Asian measurements.  If there’s size tag on clothes, you will be about to find out the clothe is the right size you ordered, but it just does not fit you, because IT IS FOR ASIAN PEOPLE.  But most of time, there’s even no tag on clothes!  It is almost “blind-shopping” buying clothes items. The pictures might be stolen from some other brands, the actual merchandise you received could be produced in any small workshop.  Sure there’s plenty of large factories manufacturing decent clothes for Foreign brands, but barely any of which were sold on Wish.

NO Shipment

Many customers have had experience on wish that their shipments were never received.  Well most time when you shopping online, you should be alerted if the shipment is coming from outside of your country.   All shipments on wish are from china, meanwhile, to save shipping cost, most sellers choose to use the most cheap shipping method to carry your order which means:  No tracking number (you will never know if your order was sent out or not, some sellers just mark their order “shipped” no matter it happens or not)

Extra long shipping time

Your order may come in a month, 2, 3, half a year or over a year,  indeed there are express shipping ways from China to other countries, but it does not happen much on Wish, no one would buy a 3 dollar item with paying 30$ shipping cost, needless to mention that lots of products are marked “free shipping” on wish. So most of time, sellers use un-registered regular mail to carry your order,  the shipping time was never guaranteed, the package is not safe, you can expect your order to come in a long time or never.

Poor Quality Products

I know While a product is labelled as “made in China”, you should perhaps not expect much quality about it. However,   I do not believe that’s the issue for wish case. Prove is When you buy some items from Walmart or Amazon, even it is made in China, the product should still be usable, most items are with decent quality. How come shopping with Wish could be so lousy？

I believe it is Wish’s Fault, the wish system does not have any Elimination mechanism upon sellers. In the early days when shopping on line became a thing, I am sure there are all kinds of sellers out there, good one and bad ones, professional sellers and Amateur sellers, but as time goes, only the best of best can last to end.   Each online marketplace has their Evaluation mechanism to keep the quality sellers and ban un-professional ones. Like Ebay and Amazon, sellers can easily get banned for bad feedback or customer complains.  Plus most other marketplaces are setting up more and more strict selling policies for their merchants to ensure excellent shopping experiences for their customers. Wish sounds very tolerant to sellers failure and their policies are loose.

Why?

I do not know exactly. But here’s the big picture I imagine:

1. Wish is a new marketplace compared to other sites (ebay, amazon), they do not have enough merchants or vendors while they want to recruit more sellers, currently they might consider it is their best option to keep a loose requirement upon vendors to avoid vendor loss.
2. Compared to other marketplace or shopping APP, Wish want to provide customers “Extra value” & “extra low price” products for customers,  cause there’s not much other advantages for customers shopping on Wish,  especially when you expect to receive your order over a month or so, what would you expect when you buying an item for 1/3 price of regular price?  Wish has to allow merchants selling low quality items for extra low price, it helps the APP to attract more customers, at least Newbies!  Or you tell me what made you placed your first order on Wish!?

Anyway, these 4 issues were mentioned mostly there, hopefully the post helps you a little bit to understand why they happens.  I have gathered information around from some of my friends who are or were selling on wish, in 2016, some new policies were released by wish and they were trying to raise their standards on merchant behaviors and improve their shopping experience for buyers. Also they are setting up fulfillment centers in Local (Wish is a USA based company, not chinese!)    Only time will tell if  things will change but at least they start to do their job.

What’s your experience with Wish?  Feel free to Comment below to share with me and readers.