Apart from Amazon and eBay, Wish.com is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms in the world.
There are a handful of benefits of shopping at Wish.com. However, there are also many drawbacks. However, Wish has more disadvantages than its benefits. Let’s explain.
Pros of Shopping at Wish
These are the benefits of shopping on the Wish platform.
Cheap Price:
The main benefit of Wish is the product price. Wish has thousands of items that are priced very low. Compared to Amazon and eBay, product prices at Wish are very cheap. There are several reasons for this low price. One of the primary reasons is the products on Wish ship directly from the manufacturer to consumers.
There are two founders of ContextLogic (parent company of Wish.com) — Sheng Zhang and Piotr Szulczewski. Piotr Szulczewski is a Polish-born Canadian citizen, and Sheng Zhang is a Chinese citizen.
In China, there are various e-commerce websites such as Aliexpress, Alibaba, etc. However, There’s another website named Taobao, which is very popular. However, Taobao exclusively sells products in China and doesn’t have any international presence. Taobao allows buyers to purchase retail products directly from factories.
Sheng Zhang knew about Taobao, copied its business model, and made Wish.com.
Wish.com allows buyers to purchase products directly from Chinese manufacturers. Most products sold on Wish directly come from the Chinese product manufacturer, so most items are very cheap.
Lots of Products:
China is the world’s factory. Nowadays, every product that we use comes from China. Most companies in other countries go there to manufacture products at a low price. China not only has cheap and experienced labor, they also have an excellent supply chain industry. Every type of raw material is available in China.
The founders of Wish exclusively created the Wish platform to connect Chinese manufacturers with western customers. Therefore, Wish has lots of products collection that directly come from factories.
Excellent Deals:
Most products we purchase on Wish directly ship from the factory to consumers’ mail addresses. There’s no intermediary. Therefore, those sellers can give excellent deals on most products.
Moreover, as the Wish marketplace is saturated with many products, sellers compete to provide cheap items. Thus, getting good deals on Wish is easy.
Most products that we purchase on Amazon are also made in China. However, typically products on Amazon would be priced more than at Wish. It’s because Amazon has to add massive markup on their products to tackle shipping, warehouse, and labor cost.
On the contrary, Wish products typically ship using the China Post-USPS medium. Therefore, the shipping cost is less. Furthermore, a Chinese manufacturer doesn’t have to deal with a warehouse in the USA; they can sell products at a low price. Moreover, shipping products from China to a US house is cheaper than shipping products domestically.
However, the benefits of shopping at Wish App end here.
Cons of Shopping at Wish
These are the drawbacks of shopping on Wish.com.
Fake Products:
The Wish App is infested with Fake products. Most of the brand products that are on sale on Wish are fake.
Wish as a company has no control over what the manufacturer sells. Moreover, Wish also doesn’t care whether the products on sale on Wish are fake or real because they have no legal bindings.
Counterfeit products are a huge issue in China. As manufacturing is easy, most business owners will try to make fake products for quick money.
Wish does a poor job tackling fake product sellers on their platform. As most of the sellers are from China, Wish has no direct control over anything. Moreover, if a seller gets shut down due to fake products, they can open another seller account. Therefore, controlling fake product sellers on Wish is tough.
China runs on nationalism. The Chinese care more about money than honesty. In the name of nationalism, stealing IP from other nations and companies is not only accepted but also encouraged. Therefore, when Chinese companies make fake products, the Chinese authorities do nothing to prevent it.
Takes Forever to Arrive:
If you purchase something on Amazon, everything typically arrives within one week. However, Wish is different.
Most products that sell on Wish come from China through postal service; typically, it takes 28 days for an order to deliver. However, it’s the best-case scenario. If the manufacturer waits to mail your order, it may take up to 2 months to get your Wish order in the mail.
Moreover, every product you purchase on Wish will generally come from multiple manufacturers. Therefore, each item will be mailed separately and arrive separately at different times.
Return Nightmare:
Wish doesn’t process any returns. They only provide a platform that connects buyers with manufacturers. It’s like Uber. Uber doesn’t own any vehicle. It’s only a platform that connects drivers with riders.
If by any chance you get the wrong product, it’s impossible to return the item. Returning a product to the Chinese manufacturer is a nightmare. It’s not only expensive, but it’s also risky. It’s risky because there’s no guarantee that the Chinese manufacturer will acknowledge that they received your product.
Therefore, only shop at Wish.com if and only if you are comfortable with the fact that you can’t return the item.
Low-Quality Products:
Products on Wish are cheap for a reason. Those are low-quality products. Anything you buy on Wish will have very poor quality. They will not last long.
The manufacturing industry in China isn’t strictly controlled like in the US or Europe. Therefore, they can get away with using dangerous and harmful chemicals in their products. Therefore, purchasing makeup, shampoo, or other skin care products from Wish is very dangerous. Because we never know what kind of chemicals those Chinese manufacturers used in the products.
Buying clothes is also not easy from Wish. Chinese clothes size and American clothes size is different. Even if you use a size conversion chart, there’s still a high probability that you will end up with the wrong size due to manufacturing faults.
In November 2021, The French government forced Google and Apple to remove Wish App from its French app store. Moreover, they also forced Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other major search engines to delist Wish.com from search results because the French government found that most products sold on Wish are fake, illegal, unsafe, and dangerous.
Moreover, the french authority also found that most electronics and perfumes that sell on Wish don’t follow EU regulations and contain hazardous and harmful chemicals. It’s why Wish is banned in French.
Misleading Product Photos and Description:
Almost all the product photos and descriptions on Wish are misleading. Manufacturers fake and manipulate images to mislead customers. Sometimes, they will intentionally deceive customers on product size. Therefore, it’s very tough to make a purchasing decision based on those photoshopped photos.
Poor Customer Service:
Wish has almost no customer service. Getting support from Wish is impossible if you face any issues regarding your order or credit card. If you contact them through the app, they will usually reply with a canned message.
The founders of ContextLogic — the parent company of Wish.com — believe that customers aren’t always right, and sometimes customers are trying to scam. Therefore, they put a very low effort into customer satisfaction.
Possibility of Account Hack:
Over the years, many Wish customers have complained that their accounts got hacked, and hackers drained their bank accounts through Wish.
Even though Wish’s headquarter is in California, they also have a Chinese office with hundreds of Chinese employees; therefore, if you are from Europe and America, be careful with your bank account or debit card number.
Unethical Business Practice:
Sometimes Wish implements unethical and questionable tactics to make themselves a profit. For example, Wish claims that they implement dynamic pricing. It means customers from different regions will see different pricing on the same product.
Algorithms and trackers analyze a customer and their spending habits. Depending on the customer, they change the price of products, which is unfair. For the same products, one person will pay $6, and another customer will pay $10.
However, due to this dynamic pricing, the sellers don’t get any profit. Wish receives the profit. For example, if a seller lists their product for $15/item and Wish.com decides to change the price to $20/item, the seller would not get the extra $5 that Wish is now charging. Wish will give $15 to the seller and keep the $5 extra for themselves.
Moreover, many times sellers have accused Wish of unethically adding shipping prices. For example, many sellers have noticed that even if they list their products on Wish as FREE SHIPPING, Wish sometimes adds extra shipping costs. When a customer buys the products and pays the shipping charge, Wish keeps the shipping cost because the seller lists it as FREE SHIPPING. It’s an unethical practice that Wish.com perpetrates.
Bottom Line
The bottom line is that Wish.com has a lot of cheap products. However, those products are affordable because their quality is poor. Therefore, if you want to purchase anything, we suggest you be extra careful with your hard-earned money.