Buyer Beware – Annie Cloth, Zolucky, NoraCora

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.

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.

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.