Well, I just got my Dear John letter I have been waiting on! What a crock of you know what! I hope someone goes to jail for a long time! Below is the e-mal I received this morning!
We're Closing Up Shop
It is with sincere regret that our company T-REXecom (AKA Trending Ecom) has been forced to close down permanently immediately due to forces outside of our control. It is our utmost priority to inform you of this terrible outcome since you are one of our valued customers who may have been affected.
Our company, Trending Ecom has been successfully offering low-cost discounted products (ranging from $15-$100) from China to our valued customers since 2017 and our family run business seemed to be gaining traction this year until something horrible happened which has forced us to close our doors for good.
What happened.
Very recently ago, we started to see a handful of our listed products go viral and became in very high demand. When this happened, we contacted our supplier in China and told them that we needed to purchase a large amount of items and starting going through our regular process to get these items bought, shipped out, and delivered fast.
Our supplier confirmed they could get these items for the quantities we needed, we wired them a very large amount of money, on more than one occasion and continued to sell these items on our store. At the same time, our marketing team started revving up our advertising campaigns, spending more money, and selling more product. Everything was looking good, our small version of the “american dream” was within reach, success was getting closer, and our hard work was looking like it was going to pay off.
As usual, our China supplier responded back shortly afterward with tracking numbers and we started forwarding these onto our new customers like usual.
Everything seemed fine and very normal until something strange happened.
Our customer service department started receiving complaints from customers who were receiving empty envelopes or not receiving their product or had tracking number problems. A few complaints turned into a LOT of complaints and they just kept pouring in, literally every few minutes. Our small support staff was getting overwhelmed as our support desk grew to 20,000+ open tickets. The harder we worked to answer the tickets, the more we got behind. We kept hiring more people (over 40 new hires), but it didn’t seem to make a dent. Customers were emailing us dozens of times per day wondering where their product was.
Our Chinese Supplier Lied to Us and Left Us With Nothing
As we scrambled to figure out what was going on, we finally got a hold of our supplier and confronted him about customer complaints and shipping delays, we learned that not only did he lie to us, but he didn’t really order and ship out the products, and even worse, half of the products he said he ordered, weren’t available to be purchased at all, and the tracking numbers that we passed onto our customers which we received from him, were bogus.
As we started investigating more, we discovered that he was trying to hide his tracks by sending out fake empty packages so he could give us the tracking number information. He lied to us, took our money, sent out fake packages and left us with nothing. And worse of all, our customers had nothing too.
As you can imagine, our team was scrambling to find solutions; but with our money already spent on growing operating costs (over 40 new support staff hires), huge advertising costs, and wiring money to our Chinese supplier, we were scammed with refund requests piling up and a lot of angry customers. As we tried to refund as many customers as possible, our small profit became “money for refunds” and eventually ran out.
The past 30 days have been a nightmare for myself and our entire team. As a USA-based company, we employed over 50 individuals of whom many were my family and friends and this has totally devastated us. We were lied to and scammed by our China supplier.
We are in the process of laying off our entire team; real hard-working individuals who did the right thing only to be ripped off.
The Problems Keep Piling Up
I wish I had better news but the fact is, we still have a long road to clean up this mess. At the time of writing this, our bank account is negative $250K and the $$$ bills and refund requests keep piling up.
We’ve Officially Run Out of Money and Resources
We’ve issued refunds for as many people as we could but we’ve officially run of money and resources. We can’t pay our bills, accounts are getting shut off, our good name has been dragged through the mud online, and our banks are calling us daily. We are in the process of seeking legal counsel to see what our options are.
We have been forced to close the doors for good and we are in the process of laying people off and trying to find jobs for those well deserved team members that had nothing to do with this China debacle.
I wish I had the financial wherewithal to refund 100% of every single person, unfortunately this is not an option. I am truly sorry.
If you are reading this, you are most likely one of the unfortunate customers who was hurt by our China supplier’s lies and misdeeds and you have my deepest apologies.
Due to these circumstances we are forced to shut down all services and will no longer be providing support services. We will keep this website up for as long as we can to provide an explanation for as many affected customers as we can.
Sincerely,
The Entire Trending Ecom Staff 😞
