I guess some deals really are too good to be true.
Home Depot vs. Lowe’s has long been the ultimate American hardware store rivalry, but a Georgia man, Sylvester Franklin, stumbled upon an even better deal on power tools from a Chinese website called AliExpress. Instead of getting a drill, Franklin got something way less useful: A printed photo of the same drill he ordered.
Unbelievable, right? And they didn’t even try to make it look good, just a folded thin paper thrown in an envelope too small to even fit a real drill.
NEW: Georgia man shocked after receiving a piece of paper instead of the electric drill he ordered online
Sylvester Franklin ordered a power drill from AliExpress in November and paid around $20
The company sent a printed-out picture of the drill instead of the actual tool
'I… pic.twitter.com/ZbvyV9RsN0
— Unlimited L's (@unlimited_ls) February 3, 2025
But the drill wasn’t the only tool that caught his eye: Turns out he also ordered a pressure washer. This time, there was no picture of said pressure washer, but even better, a singular screw. Yes, just a screw.
“This is not good. This is real bad. All this is bad, you know what I mean?”
Hey, I get it, we all love a good deal. He paid $22.47 for the power washer (which usually sells for about $100-500). So sometimes, if a price seems to good to be true, it probably is, especially if it is coming from a shady overseas website like AliExpress.
AliExpress is a branch of Alibaba, which is known as the “Amazon of China”, and this is definitely not the first time they’ve been caught scamming people. Like this woman, who ordered a snack container off of TEMU (another Chinese owned market), and…well, she got it, but I’m not sure what she’s going to be able to fit in that.
@fitwithashlee Temu order fail!!🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️ Lessons learned: Check the dimensions!!! And dont look for snack boxes while hungry, cause pills will look like crackers😂😂 #temufail #temuhauls #onlineshoppingfail #temu
Or this lady who ordered a bow for her door during the holidays, but got a printed flag of the door with the bow on it instead.
@jj.fernandez What I ordered vs. what I got #temu #humor #fail #greenscreen
Now this is getting pretty funny.
So clearly people are not very happy with their cheap Chinese finds, some even saying that they have gotten a fake tracking number, and never got sent anything.
The man who wanted the drill has been back and forth with AliExpress trying to get a refund, but apparently has not received any compensation…figures.
And he’s got a message for the scammers:
“Don’t scam nobody. I don’t like to get scammed because if you spend your money, you want to get what you paid for.”
If you remember, TEMU had an insane amount of airtime when it came to Super Bowl ads last year. And I don’t know about y’all, but I had never heard of them before then. Since then, I’ve come across all these stories and heard plenty about their cheap finds. It seems like their investment in ads last year really paid off, and now people are dumb enough to be the ones helping fund those ads with their purchases.
So take this folded up paper of a power drill as your reminder to not fall for these scams, or the Super Bowl ads that I’m sure will reappear this weekend.
Or do fall for them I guess, so then we have something to laugh about. Sylvester Franklin learned this the hard way.
Stay sharp, folks.
