I know I haven’t posted anything for ages, but the last 18 months has been filled with such non-COVID related tragedy for my family, I just couldn’t put any words together at all. And I truly thought I would never be able to gather the strength or energy to formulate a string of words into something that anyone would want to read. But apparently, I just had to get really angry, and suddenly I am filled with all kinds of things to say.
I have slowly been emerging from my funk in which I have been mired for the last year and a half. About a month ago, after surveying my closet, I realized my clothes were really faded, stretched out and just unsightly. I decided I needed to purchase some clothes that did not have unidentified stains on them, or bleach marks, and perhaps I should wear something other than my boys hand-me-downs. Problem was – I absolutely hate shopping. I won’t enter a mall and definitely I will not enter a changing room (one mirror is bad enough, three mirrors is an absolute nightmare), so – I went online.
One would think with the multitude of clothing sites available to a consumer on the internet, buying clothes would be a simple task – and it would be if I wanted to wear yoga pants, and work-out clothes but personally I like natural materials and I believe wearing spandex is a privilege and not a right. I don’t want to look like a lumpy sausage in colorful sausage casing. Because of that, finding clothes I could, and more importantly would wear was quite challenging. And I am not young anymore – so if I don’t want to look like someone seen twerking on Tik-Tok I had to be selective in my clothing purchases. And that is how I ended up ordering clothes off a site called Annie Cloth.
Annie Cloth has what appear to be beautiful clothes, in deep colors, with interesting styles and purported to be made of natural materials – cotton and linen. I purchased two pairs of wide-leg drawstring pants, and was surprised they were fairly inexpensive, as the items looked to be of fairly good quality. I made my purchase. I was really excited. I even told my husband I was going to start dressing like a grown up, and not like a 9 year old boy dressed to play in the sandbox.
I never received a confirmation email. I never received any type of correspondence stating the order had been shipped. And a little voice in the back of my head kept saying “Something is not right.” I had ordered some shirts from Nordstrom at the same time – they were having their anniversary sale, and immediately after completing the purchase with Nordstrom, I received a slew of emails – “Thank-you for your purchase”, “We are preparing to pack the items you purchased”, “We are now going to take a break, and then we will put tape on the box which contains your purchase”, and “Your purchase has been shipped and here is your tracking number.” I never received a single email from Annie Cloth. Not one – which of course I found to be really curious. I checked my bank – and the charge from Annie Cloth had been submitted immediately. I wasn’t even sure I had completed the transaction because of the lack of notifications, but I had, as evidenced by the charge.
And so I waited. For weeks. And nothing. My Nordstrom items arrived, but nothing appeared on my doorstep from Annie Cloth. Then last week, a little crumpled grey, plastic package appeared in my mail box. It seemed so light. I thought to myself, how could this be a pair of linen pants, it weighs almost nothing. Overcoming my apprehension, I opened the package with excitement and was horrified to find a pair of pastel blue pants, made out of what I can only describe as really thin material used for a shower curtain liner. The kind of shower curtain liner that flies around and sticks to your legs while you are trying to shower. The pants were so poorly constructed and sewn, I was truly disgusted. I never received the second pair of pants I ordered. I had been duped. And then I became angry.
My investigative journalist mode kicked in. I went online to PissedConsumer.com – https://annie-cloth.pissedconsumer.com/review.html – there over 1800 complaints, and everyone had exactly the same complaints I did. Below is a complaint that honestly I could have written.
Must be a scam
Over a month ago I placed an order with any cloth in the amount of $44.95 that money was taken out of my account immediately as of today I have not received my merchandise I got no email confirmation that the order was sent out they gave me an order number which I have tried to track down with no luck I emailed them asking for an update as to what was going on I never heard back even if I try and go in and cancel my order it will not allow me to I am totally upset with myself For making this bad decision to order from them there is no phone number in which to contact anybody therefore I have no way of getting my money back
User’s recommendation: Be careful.
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately – this consumer never received her items. Of the people who did receive their items, all of them stated the clothes were of such bad quality, they wanted to send them back for a refund. Apparently that is an exercise in futility. Here is another review.
Poor quality and Poor Customer Service
Do not buy ANYTHING from Annie Cloth!! They are located in China and if you want to return items they inform you that you have to ship them to China at your own expense plus customs fees! However, they will give you a 15% cash refund instead. Also, the quality of their clothing is terrible and is nothing like what is shown on their website. Stay away from this vendor!!
User’s recommendation: Stay as far away from this company as possible.
I dug deeper. I had read one review in which the reviewer suspected Annie Cloth was actually the Nora Cora clothing site. And I said “Hello – what’s this all about?” I checked the reviews for Nora Cora on Pissed Consumer.com – and oh boy – there are some angry consumers out there – 3402 reviews. I did, however, notice some of the reviews were positive, but the grammar was poor, and the reviews were definitely not written by people whose native language is English.
I took one of the photos of the clothing items being modeled (all the photos are of a model from the neck down, and incredibly tanned) and did an image search and found multiple sites with the same photo (I learned how to do that from watching the TV show “Catfish”). And that piqued my interest even more. How many clothing sites are actually huge scam sites, selling poorly made clothes to unsuspecting consumers like myself, who want to dress a little better? A bunch!!
I then dug even deeper. All of these sites are held by two corporations. CHIC V UK Limited (Registered #: 11746793), and CHIC V International Holding Limited (Corporate ID: 2231479)
CHIC V UK Limited Address: 12 Galahad Road, Philpot House, Bromley, ENGLAND
CHIC V International Holding Limited Address: Unit 507, 5/F, New East Ocean Center, No. 9 Science Museum, Tsim Sha Tsui East, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Both of these addresses are just office buildings, I am not sure where the clothes are actually manufactured. When I Googled the addresses, there isn’t actually a Philpot House in Bromley – I did find another address for NoraCora at: CHICV UK LIMITED Suite 31a, Philpot House Rayleigh, Essex SS6 7HH United Kingdom. There is really a Philpot House there, I found the satellite image. The 12 Galahad Road house is a private residence from what I can tell, with an estimated property value of 256,000.
Things are getting fishier and fishier. I did a search on the Hong Kong address and to my surprise the 5 pages of results were all contact numbers for different clothing companies, here is the list:
- Hawalily
- Lotimena
- Noracora
- Chilicloth
- Zolucky
- Annie Cloth
- Rose Linin
- Helochic
- Aslish
- Mosinia
- Melody
- Daisy Rare
- Cozy Too
- Just Fashion Now
- Lilicloth
- Caratoday
Many of these sites are also listed under the UK address in Essex, with a long list of other sites. I went on Caratoday.com just now and pop-ups kept on appearing on the screen saying so and so from Rockwall has just purchased these items, and I found myself talking to my computer screen, “Don’t buy this crap – it is a scam.”
The problem I see with this company, is they are constantly changing the site names. How does one avoid getting duped like I did? One thing I did notice, is they never change their website format – it is always the same – except on Just Fashion Now – they now have some models with their faces showing – but when you get further into the site, the photos of the clothing items are the same.
I also noticed many of the search results will have “BoHo clothing items” listed – stay away from those sites as well.
If you see a very tanned model, and her face has been cropped out of the photo – investigate a little more before purchasing any items from that site.
I did email the company at Annie Cloth just to let them know I was onto them:
I know you are affiliated with Just Fashion Now, Nora Cora and Roselinin to name a few – I am planning on filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission because of your fraudulent sales practices. Ordered items from your website, the clothes are of such poor quality, material and construction – I was horrified. Checked PissedConsumer.Com to see if this is usual practice for your company, apparently it is – about 4,000 other people have similar complaints.
Their response:
Sorry for all inconvenience.
Your opinion is very important to us. Thank you very much for your feedback. We will continue to improve our product quality and service.
But we are not same as Just Fashion Now, Nora Cora and Roselinin . Hope you can get better experience next time.
If you run into any issues please contact us, we will get back to you as soon as possible
Best regards,
Jasmine
I guess Ms. Jasmine doesn’t realize I have my done my research. I will be contacting the Federal Trade Commission, and if I can think of someone to contact in England, I will be contacting them as well.
I really wanted to dress a bit better, but now I think I will just stick with my crappy clothes.
If anyone has experienced any issues with these various companies, could you please let me know in the comments. I really want to make sure that no one else gets scammed by these people.
Featured Image credit: https://www.productreview.com.au/listings/noracora?page=2
UPDATE 8/22/21: A most interesting thing has occurred. I had emailed the company a day or two before I posted about how I though all of these sites were from the same company, and that I knew they were a scam. I received a package, with a return address out of Compton, California. It was mailed on 8/12/21 – the same day I sent the email out – and I actually received a pair of cotton, drawstring pants. They don’t look anything like the photo – but they are made of some kind of cotton blend, and not made of shower curtain liner material.
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Categories: Consumer
Way to go get them, SD. These folks must be exposed as scammers for sure. I hope you are feeling better for your successful hunt.
I am feeling much better! I am tired of the consumer being mistreated.
Annieclorh, hekka, hoodies how, berrylook, lightinthebox, modlily, azzlee, just fashion now and hakkamall are all the ripoff companies from China. They have obviously hacked a real website with nice clothes. I have searched for hours and hours trying to find the real website that they have stolen pictures of real clothes from to no avail. I guess everyone will be naked soon as most all clothing, along with everything else, comes from China and it is all junk. Too bad our American corporations it are all so greedy that their products are all made in China and so cheap as and junky they aren’t worth buying. Would someone start making good American clothing again, or import some from India, Cambodia, Viet Nam etc. whose clothing are good.
Yes – one of the previous commenters said she image searched and found the same designs, well-constructed on Walmart, Target and Amazon sites! I can’t believe these companies are allowed to advertise , I see them all the time. The mind boggles
I made a mistake buying from noracora and when the crap arrived, promptly followed instructions to process the return. I then received an email saying that, due to their distribution being based in China (although the packaging has a return label with CA address), they’d offer a 30% refund in order to save me from the international shipping fees [as a convenience to me!] NOTHING says that international shipping is involved in their return policies that they referred to when saying consumer is responsible for shipping costs. They are shady as he’ll, F with the BBB, although 4.65 on Google- I’m sure they ‘influence ‘ the reviews.
Thank-you – if you read all of the reviews so many of them are obviously written by people whose native language is not English. They must have a entire cadre of people that just fill up all the review sites!
Oh, there is a German Youtube channel (offen un’ ehrlich) that would love all this information. They expose scams all the time (there are so many of them, especially the drop-shipping type).
It feels good to read you again, even if you are venting here 🙂
Hi Solveig – so nice to hear from you. Will come over to visit.
I stupidly tried Zolucky. The clothes were awful. All polyester and weird sizes and nothing like the photos. They said I could ship them back to China! Sigh. I donated them all. Lessons learned.
Ha – thank-you for letting me know!! I was horrified by the clothes!!
Yeah. It was a total scam.
Ordered a cute (according to the picture) boho dress from zolucky. Got an email saying my package was at the depot waiting to be picked up. What depot, where? No reply. Got another email saying my package was at the distribution center. Where? I got several other emails that said I needed to click on this to get a code so my package could be sent to my mailbox for a two dollar charge. Why? I cancelled the money on my credit card, and several days later a light weight gray plastic package was in my mailbox! It was the dress I ordered, but the colors were not quite the same and the material was not the gauzy cotton that it seemed to be in the photo. Return instructions were not clear and I can’t get on their web page to follow instructions for returning the dress.
Sounds like the same gray package I received (from an Oakland, CA address)after I emailed them, and told them I knew what they were about. I understand returns are almost impossible and very costly. Very sketchy, I see they have other company names with the same photo format.
Oh baby, I bit! About three years ago and bought a blouse, linen dress and linen pants from NoraCora. I actually received my merchandise. But the XL shirt would not have fit a toddler. The linen dress was made with the finesse of a potato sack and the pants were unwearable. I could not return it and they offered me the same piddly 15% refund which I opted not to accept because I didn’t want them near my bank account again! Thank you for doing this research. I hope these scammers get what they deserve!
Hi Diana – thank-you for letting me know. I know there are gobs of people that have been scammed by this, and I have reported them to everyone I can think of. Nothing – apparently- because I see their ads all the time!
I’ve been skeptical of these clothing sites and was glad to find your site; it confirmed what I thought. Some photos look so good, it can really suck you in.
My question is – have you found any reputable sites at reasonable prices?
(I have used Talbots, but they can be pricey if the item’s not on sale.)
Hi – I just saw your message. So sorry! One of the other commenters said she had image searches some of the items and found them on Walmart and Target sites I think! I kind of stopped looking after the fiasco with the shower curtain pants!
You are correct, this must be a scam. I am disabled and hate to shop for clothes so I did order new items for this year. The material was very thin, sizes tooooo large and others soooo small, nothing fit properly at all. I am very distraught and completely upset with myself for doing this. I do not want the 15% but a total refund. Still have not received their address to mail my returns back to them. ugh!!!!!
Clearly, There is a huge market for this clothing style, its perceived quality, use of fabrics and color. Unfortunately, we’re not going to wear them. Perhaps a reputable company will come along, if one hasn’t already, and deliver!
I hope so!!
Can you tell me who these Chinese fashion manufactures are stealing fashion images from? For years I’ve been trying to hunt down the true fashion designers in these Chinese ads. I want to buy clothing from the actual retailer of these beautiful fashion images. I can’t come up with anything. Zo Lucky NoraCora etc. are stealing images. Where Are those true manufacturers? Who are they stealing from?
According to another commenter- these same items can be found on Walmart and Amazon
Thank you for sharing this info. I had almost ordered from NoraCora but noticed that there were some odd things about the site. I thought that the photos were odd, always, only having one photo with three different distances. As well as the models head always left out, And how they always seemed to have every size available, none sold out. And I noticed they used photoshop to place an image over some t-shirts, wrinkles in the shirt but not in the image.
Anyways.. I wanted everyone who reads this tp also know, that using Google Image Search I had actually found MANY of the items I wanted to order! Several from Walmart, and others from Amazon!
We need to make these companies go out of business. If Hong Kong, England and any other foreign country do not want to cooperate, the United States should have the resources to ban these companies and prohibit them from reaching US territories via internet.
I filed a complaint with the FTC, never hear anything back. That’s why I decided to write this post, at least try to get the word out!
Thank you so much for your article. I was looking for a phone # to call Annie Cloth to see about ordering by phone & saw your article ,& I’m sure you saved me a big headache. I won’t be ordering from them thanks to you.
I am so glad. I was so easily scammed, as apparently many others have been. I feel like if I save one person from the aggravation I went through, my post was successful!! Thank-you for letting me know!!!
I have been scammed by Fiercego barbara and azzilee. I feel so stupid. Glad to hear I am not the only one. This crap really needs to stop. I have learned an expensive lesson!
Add Dress Victoria to the list of Overseas Clothing Rip off Stores! Federal Trade Comission needs to shut all these places down.
I agree. I have written them so many times!! Nothing seems to happen!!
Thank you for doing the thorough research. I suspected it but didn’t pursue it, even after I was stung twice with such poor quality & the “gotcha” return situation. I will never buy from any of them again, as well as any other Facebook ad.
Their catalogues and clothing looks so appealing! It’s a shame it is all such a scam!
My experience was with Zolucky. I wasn’t real impressed with the quality of items I received, but then again for the price I was paying I hadn’t been expecting a whole lot anyway. And I had read reviews ahead of time regarding returns and having to pay for that shipping myself if that was going to be the case, so I had already made mental note I would just donate the stuff if it didn’t fit or if I didn’t like it.
That said, it DID seem to take an awful long time to receive my orders (I’ve placed 2 orders within a year). Each order came in multiple deliveries (I think they were EACH split in two separate deliveries- weird I thought- so 4 deliveries altogether). However, as I tracked my orders, one instance had me wondering why a vest in particular was taking so darned long. I kept emailing and I would get the same auto response you got (you opinion is important to us, blah blah blah). After two months had passed and no further tracking updates other than “processing” for that one vest, I finally unleashed a little fury in an email re the missing item and they actually issued a refund (showed up in a few business days).
I just decided after that not to order from Zolucky again, The headache wasn’t worth it.
So fast forward about six months, I’m browsing and I find a site for “Just Fashion Now”… the faceless model and clothes looked AWFULLY FAMILIAR….
I started doing a little more poking around for more reviews and blogs, stumbled across yours here…
Yeah, agreed. Stay away from the tanned faceless model clothing sites. Not worth the headaches. 😛
Yes – avoid the tanned, headless model in cute clothes companies – that’s basically all one needs to know!
May 30, 2023
Same experience with Light in the box. I saw these gorgeous dresses as a side ad on several websites I visit. They are everywhere. My friend had a dress on I really liked and she said she got it from NoraCora. Before I had a chance to check their website I saw the Light in the box ad. One model was wearing her dress so I went there and ordered a few things on sale. They were cheap and I was crushed. The dresses looked so cool on their site. The shipping charges are outrageous. Trying to return anything was a farce. I just did a search asking if NoraCora and Light in the box were the same companies. That’s how I found your article. I was shocked at all the companies under one business address. I have seen several of these companies ads.
Like you, I was dressing like a slob and wanted to be a girl again. I hate shopping. So this seemed like the perfect solution. Lesson learned. Thank you for all your research and work.
I am so sorry you fell into the allure of the headless tanned woman with beautiful clothes. I see these sites everywhere – with new names. I have made complaints to every organization I can think of, but I think the complaints need to come from people in the UK. The British equivalent of the FTC sent me a very nice reply saying they couldn’t investigate as I didn’t live in the UK. Hopefully someone will bring this company down.