If it’s too good to be true…well, you know.

I found it on Facebook, on a page called Vonluxe. $19.99 for a hammock chair. It looked fun. My wife’s birthday was coming up. Bingo.

Of course, unless it’s Lego size there is no self respecting hammock chair that costs less than $20 but I was blindsided. COVID-19 and no income had decreased my shopping experience so I ignored gut instinct and paid for the thing.

The link took me to a website called Homemoon. The product was called Backyard & Park Swing Hammock. Don’t buy more than one at a time, they asked, demand was too high.

‘Well,’ I thought, ‘how lucky am I.’

Maximum 35 days to ship, they promised, and the wife’s birthday was in 29 days. I like a challenge that I have no control over.

The weeks past and of course it didn’t arrive. The tracking link on the order confirmation page never worked but once the wife’s birthday had come and gone, and then once the 35 day maximum shipping promise had expired, I wrote to the company to ask where the hammock was.

“It has been delivered,” they wrote back, actually including a tracking link that suggested that a package had come through my local post office.

“I haven’t received a hammock,” I replied, but after a few back and forth it was clear that customer service was lacking. They went as far as accusing me of lying and suggesting the package might still be at the post office.

And then I realised something. Strangely, one unrequested package had arrived from a Chinese address. It was tiny. I was confused. Even Lego hammock chairs aren’t this small.

I opened the envelope and squinted. A lightweight, plastic ring, with a tag on it for $199. ‘Platinum’ - it said.

This ring was not Platinum or worth $199. It was a toy ring, the kind you’re disappointed at when you win the last-place prize at a carnival.

Eventually it struck me, the scam was kinda clever. They’d sent a really lightweight product (the ring) from China in order to generate a legitimate tracking link. Of course, no tracking link confirms what is actually inside the package.

I continue to email the hammock chair scammers, hoping that eventually they’ll relent and send a refund for the hammock that never arrived. But I’d imagine for just the sake of £19.99 + £10 shipping most people will give up.

I write this blog in the hope that a hopeful but suspicious buyer will save themselves $30, five weeks of waiting and the indignity of having to re-home a crappy plastic ring.