Wednesday, 6 June 2012

Wholesaleassistant.co.uk Specializes in Stolen Information and Unethical Business Methods


The website does not give you even a hint of the real picture. However, scratch the surface a bit and you get to see the real face of wholesaleassistant with scam written all over it. The bad news for those who have already subscribed to their service is that this is a scam site and fools you by its ridiculously low entry fee of one pound. That should be a clear hint of what they are really up to because information does not come that cheap in any case.

Here is the catch behind the one pound offer. You are lured with the small fee and then you are automatically re-billed for the full price of £19.99 once the trial period of one week has ended. Please note that they cunningly give you just a week of free trial so that they can get the larger share of the loot as quickly as possible.

Unethical Trade Practices Abound Here

You cannot really put up an argument about not being informed in advance about the full price because there is something they have cleverly tucked in the fine print. It says that you must send an email cancellation request to prevent your account from getting debited a second time without your authorization. It is nothing but some shrewd move to get your account details after which they hardly bother about the niceties.

That’s not all, the scam show continues on wholesaleassistant. As you dig deeper, more murky details emerge. The information about wholesale suppliers posted on the website is not exclusive as they claim but can be sourced on the web for free. Further, the products available from these wholesalers can be found on eBay and other ecommerce sites at a much cheaper price. So what exactly is the point of using the “services” of this useless site?

The Wholesalers Database is a Stolen One

It is obvious that the listings are not researched; they were just picked up from random sources and put together. Wholesaleassistant then sells you this stolen information for 20 pounds, fooling you by claiming it to be a result of their extensive research. They claim to update their listings regularly but it does not take much to learn that most suppliers listed here are just middlemen who sell substandard and even counterfeit products.

If you want to cancel subscription, you can leave anytime. That is what they say on the website. Yes, it is true that you can walk off anytime but do not expect a refund. They never ever refund your money even if you have not been delivered the type of service they promised you.

The crooks at wholesaleassistant will keep your money and even charge your account repeatedly despite your mails and phones making it amply clear that you want to cancel your account. They are quick to take away your money but you can just forget about making any money from their plans or getting a refund. Money once paid is lost forever.

If you want access to genuine and verified suppliers, you can sign up with a reliable trade directory with positive reviews where supply sources are individually verified. Don’t mess up your business prospects by dealing with scammers such as wholesaleassistant. They are a complete waste of time.

Friday, 1 June 2012

Wholesaleassistant.co.uk — Expensive Products


The site wholeassistant.co.uk has been found unreliable by the buyer community, and the reasons are not far to seek. Here is a list of some of the reasons behind buyer antipathy.

Outdated Database

The site has not been updated in a long time. Buyers are never sure if the prices listed, are recent or three years old. The database does not carry the date of last update, which means that they have been trying to hide its antiquity.

Outdated databases are absolutely useless. You never know if the information provided is relevant or not. Where wholesale prices change every week, you cannot depend on a site that does not update its directory for months, maybe even years.

Copied from Free Lists

Buyers have been complaining that wholeassistant does not feature new and relevant information. The supplier information has been copied from free wholesale lists. Much of the information can be found through a simple keyword search on the internet. Naturally, if you are paying £15 for membership, you expect something you will not find on free wholesale lists.

Expensive Products

The products are expensive, even though they make it appear as if you are getting a big discount. The wholesale prices are much higher than what you will find on better wholesale sites. The product categories are limited as well. If you are expecting hundreds of products in each category, you are bound for disappointment.

The products displayed on the home page are just a few among the extremely limited inventory. Do not buy into promises of wholesale bargains on hundreds of products. What is more, if you are serious about specializing in a niche, this site will not help. The haphazardly selected products will not form a good inventory for your store.

The site completely lacks market research, despite its claims. That is why the products are lackluster and expensive. It looks like the site administrators put no thought into finding the right products.

Incomplete Supplier Information

Buyers never know if the supplier information here is legit. Much of the information has been copied from wholesale lists of doubtful veracity. There is no mention of any supplier verification and this is one major reason buyers don’t want to find merchandize through this directory.

Experienced buyers know that on the internet, you cannot afford to purchase products from unverified sellers, no matter how good their promises. These promises are meant to be broken and the buyer usually suffers a big loss in the process — another reason to stay away from wholeassistant.

Unauthorized Membership Renewals 

Unauthorized renewal of your membership can be a major nuisance if you have used credit cards to purchase membership. This site renews your membership automatically, without asking for permission. Sometimes, the only way to stop such unauthorized renewal of membership is to cancel your credit card altogether, or go through a lengthy arbitration process later.

The site’s disadvantages far outweigh the advantages, if any. The expensive, recurring fees, limited and unaffordable products, and the irrelevant wholesale database are not the only drawbacks of this company.

If you are committed to building a profitable, sustainable business, the smartest course of action would be avoid sites like this one.

Saturday, 19 May 2012

How Wholesaleassistant.co.uk Cons And Scams - A Personal Experience


I’m pretty angry guy right now for being taken in by a con job like wholeassistant.co.uk. I’m also disappointed that this scam is still out there, calling itself a product and supplier sourcing service. I’m no big-shot retailer but I’ve been around the block long enough to know a con job when I see one. I guess a part of me was saying that this whole thing was a dirty little trap and I should stay away from it. I went ahead nonetheless and got conned.

So how did a guy like me get swindled by this no-good site? Well it started with me getting frustrated with the way my product sourcing was going. I deal in novelty items and my peak buyer season was just around the corner. I have a pretty good set of merchandize but I wanted to find something different. I’m used to looking through bunches of catalogues and making a lot of phone calls but wholesaleassistant.co.uk seemed to be offering great product deals with one “amazing” tool.

Wholesaleassistant.co.uk said that they would show me everything I’d need to know about the product - I’m talking RRPs, profit margins, what the competition was pricing it at and how much the supplier was selling for. It was basically all the stuff I look for but without the hours of hard work! Frankly, I found the offer just too tempting. I was also tired and frustrated and I needed to get some merchandize in for the buying season.

I had to fork over more money than I care to admit, to look at this shoddy excuse for a sourcing service. I’m usually obsessive about updating my supplier contact information and keeping everything current. So, imagine how angry I was to find out that wholesaleassistant.co.uk hardly ever gets updated! I guess that’s when my common sense kicked in and I started checking out some of the supplier names.

Sure enough, most of these suppliers’ contact info was right there online, for free. I could have just Googled and got the same result. If that wasn’t bad enough, I discovered that I could have got cheaper rates outside of wholesaleassistant.co.uk! The more I dug, the more information I found that made it clear that I had been conned. The site mainly deals in confiscated or lost property but how do you even know that the stuff is legal? When you can’t even get the right contact information of the supplier, how can you be sure he isn’t dropping fake goods on you?

What really got me fuming is that this completely useless membership automatically renewed itself for £14.99! I cancelled this as soon as I could but not before I ended up paying for a bunch of stuff that was outdated and useless. Don’t get taken in by this scam! Wholesaleassistant.co.uk is an outright fraud if I ever saw one. I just wish I had listened to my gut instinct and stayed away from this site.

Sunday, 6 May 2012

How Much Faith Should You Put In Wholesaleassistant.co.uk?


Wholesaleassistance.co.uk is another lesser-known wholesale site. According to their website, the site was established in 2008, with the goal of helping buyers find wholesale deals and suppliers. How far they have moved toward this goal remains to be seen.

Not an Original Idea

First, the site concept is very similar to another wholesale site, with the exception being that the other site is known for its authentic deals and also happens to be popular with a number of eBay power sellers. Wholesaleassistant.co.uk, on the other hand, is neither well known nor does it have the credibility to draw the more experienced buyers. It depends on the inexperience of buyers to sell itself. Inexperienced buyers are more likely to be lured by the promises and less likely to research the site before signing up.

The concept has been copied from elsewhere, right down to the features and the way deals are profiled. For example, the deals are mentioned along with the RRP and profit margin. They site also claims to provide e-books and case studies. There is some doubt about the relevance and quality of these products, but you can be certain of one fact: Even the idea of helping buyers with case studies and info products has been copied from another site.

Unverified Suppliers

The quality of products on this site may also be a cause for concern. Usually, less-known directories do not have access to high-profile, legitimate suppliers. Therefore, they use information recycled from other directories. A lot of this information is misleading. Add to it the fact that probably the suppliers have not been verified, and you begin to see why buyers are wary of using such sites.

A shady supplier offers poor-quality products. They will not give you the discounts required to make your business a success. Another reason to mistrust this site is the type of items on sale. Most of the items here are confiscated property or secondhand stock. That might sell in some markets, but if you are an ordinary eBay trader, you will not find too many customers for such products.

Plus, there is no telling where the products are actually coming from. Have they been legally released into the supplier’s custody for sale? Are they dangerous or banned items?  If you cannot trust the supplier, then naturally, you will be a little wary of these products. That is why experienced buyers do not look to wholesaleassistant.co.uk to find supplies.

The products on this site seem to have been randomly selected. There is no way by which the buyer can locate products in a particular category. If you are lucky, you might find a product in your niche. But this could be a once-in-a-blue-moon type of occurrence. Usually, you can find anything from a camera to baby supplies here, but there is no telling which type of product you will find on this site on a given day. If your business depends on regular stock upgrades, you will find that wholesaleassistant.co.uk may not work for you.

If you are really serious about making a splash in the world of e=commerce, you will have to start by stepping around sites such as wholesaleassistant.co.uk and finding more usable alternatives.