I’m a buyer, I have an issue with a product that I've purchased from an Ecwid store
This is a guide for individuals who purchased a product online from an Ecwid-hosted store but have not received the order and want their money back or have received the item but it significantly differs from the original description. So if you have questions like 'Where is my order?', or if you want to dispute a charge, this guide is for you.
Contact the seller
If you are in need of help with an order, first try contacting the store directly. Store owners are responsible for providing their customers information on their orders. You can contact the seller:
- by calling the store at the phone number or email found on the store website in the “Contact Us” section;
- through the store’s social media pages on Facebook or Instagram;
- the order confirmation email might also contain the store’s contact details or the tracking information for the order.
What do I do if I don’t hear back from the store?
If you have tried resolving the issue with the store but it hasn’t worked, you can get in touch with Ecwid support. Please include the following information: Your name, email address, the Ecwid store’s web address (domain), and your order number. We may contact you in the event that we need to collect additional information from you.
For privacy reasons, Ecwid can’t provide any information on an investigation. However, the store owner is informed on the issue and you will be notified if the merchant responded (if the product has been sent or a refund has been processed) or the store has been suspended due to policy violation.
Request a chargeback on a credit card or PayPal purchase
If you have tried contacting the store but haven’t received a response from them, we highly recommend reaching out to your bank and explaining the situation to them.
If you made the payment using a credit card, call the number on the back of your card and tell your bank’s customer service you would like to perform a chargeback or dispute a charge. Your bank will inform you of the necessary course of action.
Depending on your bank, you may be able to initiate a chargeback entirely online. Here are the instructions for American Express, Capital One, Citibank, and Discover.
If you paid via PayPal, we highly recommend you open a dispute in the PayPal Resolution Center. PayPal will freeze the payment in the seller's account until the dispute has been resolved. They may also request some additional information, for example why there is a need for the payment to be refunded. And it might take up to a month for your PayPal account to be credited. In most cases, the disputes are resolved in the buyer's favor.
Beware: red flags for scams and unscrupulous stores
Some of the most common signs of fraud are provided below. When in doubt of the legitimacy of the store, we recommend contacting the store before you make your purchase as well as searching for reviews people have written about the store. In all likelihood, you are not the only one who’s dealt with the outfit. Somewhere on the Internet, you will find people telling their own stories and expressing how happy or unhappy they are after having dealt with them.
The deal is too good to be true
Think you’ve found the deal of the century having stumbled upon airline tickets at 40% the price that the airline and the other middlemen are selling it? In this moment, you may start to pity everybody else that’s paying two or three times as much while this travel agency online has just saved you a bundle on your trip. But in all likelihood you will receive a cancel notice, perhaps at the least convenient possible time, and you may never see that money again. An unusable e-ticket may be all you get for your money, but you should have exercised a little skepticism. If a deal looks ridiculously too good to be true, it probably is.
Contact information is missing or doesn’t work
The Contact Us page is a good place to look when in doubt of a website’s legitimacy. Is it barren on information or you call and their phone number doesn’t work, these signs should give you pause. If there is no information there at all, but only an address, you may want to hesitate and instead go with another outfit with more of an online presence that is also vouched for. If the address doesn’t pop up on Google maps or you call their number and it belongs instead to a private individual, you can bank on the outfit’s lack of professionality at the very least. If you can’t find anything on them online, steer clear. Better safe than sorry.
The website hasn’t published their shipping policy or whether they accept returns
As important as it is for companies to protect their rights and interests with respect to transactions, a shipping policy and a return policy are things that every company has. Even if they are an honest business, they are unprofessional at best. At worst, this unprofessionalism may entail unscrupulous activities or a scam. Have a look at these policies. Are they organized, detailed, and polished? If so, that is the reason to trust them a little bit more. Many criminals won’t take the time to bother doing extra unnecessary work if they have nothing to ship.
They accept a limited range of payment methods
Unscrupulous outfits engaged in an illegal activity tend to have a harder time gaining and keeping the cooperation of trusted payment gateways. It would be odd for a company not to be able to accept the major credit cards, at least Visa or MasterCard. Most websites also offer a few additional payment systems like PayPal. And particularly if the website offers you no choice but to send money to some specific bank account or transfer a MoneyGram without being able to use a major card payment system, they are certainly not to be trusted. Unconventional payment methods are usually used because the criminal would have an easier time getting away with a scam without being able to be effectively tracked.