Shopurbanice reached out to me on Instagram asking me to be an ambassador. Maybe they have done the same to you and asked you to be an ambassador for them. Should you? Perhaps you find this while searching Google for Information on this company. I'll share my research with you to hopefully save you some money and grief.
Shopurbanice is a ripoff.
The Bait.
You're a small Instagrammer, you get a message that makes your heart leap with joy. "Have I finally been discovered?" you think to yourself.
.The message reads:
Hi, thanks for reaching out. We have been looking for a few people, who fit our style to potentially collab.
We would be happy to offer you 50% off everything in our store, so you can cop our drippin’ jewelry and come on board as an official ambassador. In addition to that, you will also earn a 30% commission for every purchase using your ambassador code.
All we ask is that if we decide to work together, you tag us in a pic of you wearing our gear you got and we will feature you on our IG & website! Does that sound good?
No, this is not good, and this instantly should make you suspect. Any time a vendor is asking you to pay a dime for a product that you are supposedly getting a deal for, you should be suspicious. But I decided to look at their store, and that's when I was able to investigate how badly they are ripping people off. This is why you should never buy from them.
The ripoff.
Normally store chains or retailers don't have the resources to manufacture their own products. The retailer is the interface between the factory that produces goods and the consumers. There's nothing wrong with a retailer marking up the price of goods. In fact that's their whole business model. However there is a line between selling counterfeit goods, trying to rip people off, and marking up goods. In the case of Shopurbanice, they are marking up cheap items from overseas manufacturers that are only a few dollars, and then touting those items as being of "high quality" and "designer" in order to make people believe that what they are being is of high quality. This is false advertising, and its illegal in the US. Literally, they could be sued for their product descriptions.
On their About Us page they say:
Our quality pendants go through extreme planning before reaching your door. Our pendants undergo quality castings to define the standards of jewelry creation, a standard that give high quality jewellery with more exclusive designs.
The proof.
I found an item on their site that looked like it would be easy to track down on other retail websites. On Shopurbanice is an Ak-47 necklace, this will be easy to find on other retail websites.
On amazon.com we see a seller with what appears to be the exact same item for only $16.99 and....Uh-Oh! Isn't that the same dude from the Shopurbanice.com photo? Yes it is! So. It looks like we have an exact match. $129 is a far cry from $16.99. Major ripoff Shopurbanice.
But we can go deeper. Now we know that the manufacturer is somewhere else. Let's go to Alibaba and see if we can find this product.
Oh my goodness. That's the same Item isn't it? Yes it is! Aha! So now we know the root supplier. Well, lets be sure. Let's take the photo from Alibaba and compare it to the one from urbanice. When we do that, we see that it is the exact same product photo, with the exact same lighting. The only difference is a digitally created reflection on the photo from AliBaba. This seals the deal.
Shopurbanice is therefore marking up a product 97.7% and that's just what we looked at. This is not good, nor is this ethical. Micci Jewelry Co.,Ltd is very up front in their AliBaba ad about their quality and products. It is Shopurbanice that has created a fraudulent description. The manufacturer makes no mention of a number of dips in gold to plate this. Buyer beware but my fashion advice is to shop elsewhere.
Comments