- Hey guys, today I'm going to be reviewing
drop shipping stores from our subscribers
but with a bit of a twist.
See after my last store review, I had lots of people ask me
if I would review their stores
because they weren't making as many sales as they had hoped.
Well, as I started to browse through these stores,
I became quite concerned.
Some of them were making sales,
though not as many as they were hoping for
but frankly, they should be glad they weren't making them.
Despite the fact that I have talked
extensively on this channel before,
about how to protect yourself legally
when drop shipping and selling online,
these stores were absolute legal nightmares.
They were just begging to be shut down
either from being sued, or having their PayPal accounts
or their Shopify Payments account shut down
and frozen for the sake of business practice.
Who cares if you make lots of money,
if PayPal freezes your account.
That is why in this video I am not
gonna be reviewing these stores for sales,
conversions and branding, though of course if you guys
watching this have any advice for them,
be sure to leave it in the comments section below.
Instead, I'm going to talk about what the stores
need to do A.S.A.P so that they don't get shut down.
And quick disclaimer, I am not
a lawyer, so this is not official legal advice.
So with that out of the way, let's get started.
(upbeat tune)
Okay, who is lucky victim number one?
And it is Scoops World Online.
Thomas, congratulations on making four sales,
however as you're about to discover,
I am very concerned about those sales.
Alright, let's switch over to my
computer and we will take a look.
Okay, so here we are on Scoops World Online.
So as you guys can see, Thomas is selling phone cases,
phone accessories, headphones.
And again, I am not reviewing these stores
for sales and conversions.
You guys can leave Thomas your own advice
in the comment section.
At the moment that I stepped inside the store,
I was thinking, oh no, phone cases are one of the most
common items that engage in copyright
and trademark infringement on AliExpress,
and so scrolling down, what do you think that I found?
Yes, I found copyright infringement everywhere.
Take a look at this phone cover featuring
photos of Mike Tyson.
Photos have copyrights too.
This picture of Bob Marley, copyrighted.
These phone cases have almost certainly
been produced illegally and let's take
a look at these Marvel cases that you're selling, Thomas.
These are all illegally made and sold.
You need to get rid of these A.S.A.P.
See, my concern, Thomas, is that these
are the items that you've been successfully selling.
Selling popular copyrighted characters
like Captain America is super easy,
but why do you think it's easy?
It's easy because Marvel and Disney
have poured squillions of dollars into
making them super popular and they've done that
so they can make squillions of dollars back
from selling their own merchandise.
And they're not going to let you do that.
Selling these phone cases is illegal and
they're within their rights to sue you.
And this is something you all need to keep in mind
because copyright and trademark infringement
is rampant in China, because over there
these laws are not enforced.
Now after I've told you all that,
let me just confuse you for a second.
You see this brand new Captain America action figure here?
I could go ahead and list this on my own store
right now and sell it legally.
But wait Sarah, you just said you can't sell items
that are copyrighted, how are you able to sell this?
Well it's because I went and bought it
from a store.
This store bought these figurines legally
from the licensed creative distributor
who got them directly from the
copyright holder's manufacturer.
Because the store bought it legally from the distributor,
who acquired them legally from the copyright
holder's manufacturer, it meant that it was
legal for me to purchase this.
And it's perfectly legal to resell items
as long as you've got them from a legal source.
The problem with AliExpress suppliers though,
is they almost never have permission to
actually use these copyrighted characters.
And thus, they did not produce them legally
in the first place.
And this also answers another question that I get a lot.
Sarah, I want to sell this flamingo water bottle
but it has the name of the Chinese manufacturer
Transhome on it.
Is that legal?
And the answer is yes, when the Chinese
manufacturer Transhome went and made their
own generic flamingo water bottle,
and then slapped their own name on it,
they had every right to make it and every right
to do so.
Because they produced it legally, they have the legal right
to sell it to you which means that you
then have the legal right to go on
and resell it to customers.
Hopefully I cleared that up.
Alright, so who is lucky victim number two?
And lucky victim number two is Doggo Trend by Heemin.
Sorry if I pronounced your name wrong, Heemin.
Alright Heemin, so you joined The Dropship Club
and you made sales and that's awesome,
but going through the store, I can see there's
a lot from the course that you've skipped
and this is potentially the worst thing that you skipped
because you could lose everything from this mistake.
Alright, so let's switch over to your store.
Alright, so here we are at your store Heemin, Doggo Trend.
Scrolling down, I can't see any products with copyright
infringements which I'm relieved about.
But hold on, hold on!
What's this?
What's this Heemin?
Something very important is missing from this footer.
And so when I saw that it was missing,
I thought, oh it must be in the menu, but no.
No.
It's not in there either.
So what am I talking about?
I'm talking about the refund policy page.
The fact that I couldn't find it anywhere starts
to make me concerned that perhaps it didn't even exist.
And so I went to Google, and I did a search for it
and nope, seemingly you have no refund policy on your site.
This needs to change.
This is something that I've actually talked about
a lot on this channel and inside The Dropship Club as well.
I actually give our members inside there
a refund policy template.
I also recommend that you link to the
refund policy page in the footer of your site.
That way, it will be on every single page and
all customers have no excuse for not having read it.
Now here's the thing, I don't actually think that
a refund policy is a legal requirement,
at least, I don't think that it's a legal requirement
in the USA but it's still very important
for you as a merchant to have one.
Think about this, a customer goes and orders a shirt
from you, but it arrives and it's the wrong size,
it's too small for them, and so they email you
and they say, oh hey, I ordered a shirt from you
but I ended up selecting the wrong size.
Can I please get a refund and get a new shirt?
Now not only is this a huge pain for you,
but you lose money if you follow through with this request.
So of course you email back the customer
and say, I'm sorry, we only do refunds for faulty items.
But you see, this consumer is used to the ridiculously
generous return policies that huge stores like
Macy's offer, which by the way,
is not standard in the eCommerce world for small sellers.
And so this lovely customer goes,
wait you didn't specify that, there's no policy
on your site, how was I supposed to know that
you wouldn't let me return the shirt if it didn't fit?
Screw you, I'm going to PayPal.
And so they go to PayPal and they open up a dispute.
Now I think there's a really good chance you would
win that dispute because the customer shouldn't
just expect that they can return an item
if they selected the wrong size
but the damage is still done.
I once read a Facebook comment from a
drop shipping group Facebook group from someone who said,
"Who cares if you give a customer a refund
for an item that's out of stock?
No one loses anything."
Uh no.
PayPal and credit card companies watch your seller metrics.
How many refunds do you get?
How many disputes do you get?
If you get too many, you risk getting kicked off and frozen.
So Heemin, before you do anything, make it a priority
to go and add this A.S.A.P.
Alright then.
So who is going to be lucky victim number three?
And lucky victim number three is Kokosale from Alex.
Okay Alex, let's go take a look and see how
compliant your store really is.
So here we are on Kokosale.
Again, I am not giving any conversions or sales advice.
If anyone watching this has any, you can feel free
to leave it in the comments section.
So scrolling down the site, I couldn't see any
immediate evidence of copyright infringement,
which is good and of course you have a refund policy
in the footer of your store and that is good.
But there is another major thing I wanted to check for
and to do that, I came and opened up a product page
and took a look and you know what, Alex?
You know what?
It isn't here.
It isn't here!
You've taken the time to install the Beeketing app
to add scarcity to your store, but you haven't
taken the time to add a shipping time disclaimer.
Nowhere on this product description is there any disclaimer.
The fact that you prioritize adding a countdown timer,
this is setting expectations for your customers,
is extremely troubling.
Let's be honest, long shipping times
are one of the downsides to drop shipping.
The 10 to 20 days that a customer needs to wait
for ePacket shipping, while it's usually on the lower
end of that scale, is still a lot.
Now the reason why most people are concerned about it
is because they're scared of it impacting
their conversions and their sales so they try
to hide it from the customer.
But that's not going to work.
After having a week of not receiving your item,
the customer is gonna email you and say,
hey I don't have my item, what's up?
And when you go, oh shipping times are two to three
weeks, just be patient, they're not going to be patient.
They're gonna go and file a dispute with PayPal
for you not telling them.
And you know what?
Not warning the customer about abnormally
long shipping times is shady practice.
And PayPal is understandably not going to be very impressed.
So don't be shady.
Will having longer shipping times are normal
and affect your sales and conversions?
Yes, but not as much as you might think.
The real concern here is about the follow up
customer support that you need to do
if the customer doesn't understand it properly
before they order from you.
So make sure that you are very upfront with them.
Tell them it will take two to three weeks.
For it to be on the safe side,
tell them it will be two to four weeks.
You should be putting the disclaimer very clearly
on your product page and I recommend that you
bold this to make sure the potential customer sees it.
And then I recommend that you go ahead
and you put the disclaimer in your confirmation email
telling the customer that the shipping is going
to take two to four weeks and to please be patient.
So thank you very much to everyone
that submitted their store.
I hope Thomas, Heemin, and Alex
that you are not too offended by my
very blunt advice and that you go and you make
those changes A.S.A.P.
And thank you very much to everyone who watched this.
If you would like even more honest advice
about aspects of drop shipping and selling online,
that are very important to know, but rarely talked about,
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And as you may remember from earlier in this video,
here at Wholesale Ted, we have a premium
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The Dropship Club.
It takes you through the process
of setting up a drop shipping store from start
to finish and it's perfect for beginners.
If you'd like to join it, simply click on
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And before you run off, I've got you more free
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Here at Wholesale Ted, we also have a free eBook
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To get that eBook for yourself, simply click
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