If you clicked on this post chances are you know the websites I meant in the title. Those websites with clearly photoshopped images, or tons of selfie pictures. Usually they have everything on sale and it’s some random percentage off, like 68% off the full price. Their prices always seem too good to be true, but you find yourself aimlessly scrolling the site for clothes because you hope it’s real.
One of my old coworkers introduced me to these kinds of sites by mistake one day. She had ordered a ton of clothes and being a larger lady she had ordered some 2x sweaters. When they came the sizing was absolutely off. Her 2x sweaters fit her ferret. She thought it was so funny she took pictures and was showing them around the office. She said that because return shipping was like $90 to send it back overseas she may as well get a laugh out of what happened.
Her experience always stuck out to me. How naive do you have to be to think you are going to get decent brand new clothes for $2.40. It’s just unreasonable. At least I thought that until the pandemic hit. Once the lockdown started we had to close our office and eventually the company I worked for went under. I managed to get decent unemployment benefits, so I was able to survive through the pandemic.
A few weeks ago I realized I had burned through my benefits and the little bit of savings I had; so I started looking for a new job. The pandemic was unkind to many of us and our waistlines, myself included. So I set out to find new interview outfits and work clothes on a budget. When I say I was on a tight budget, I mean that underestimating sales tax could have cost me my next meal. That’s when I remembered my old coworker and her ferret sized sweater.
I did some googling to try and find the most trustworthy cheap site I could. After checking out some Facebook groups on scams and knock off sites I saw several people say they had great experiences with one large site. This site is fairly well known and has even had pop up shops and runway shows, so it seemed legit. A bunch of group admins said not to trust it and went on a long tirade every time someone mentioned it, but people kept commenting that the site was fine. I figured the admin team was on a power trip and I decided to listen to the comments. The only warning they had was to check the size charts. This website was based overseas and did not use standard US sizing. Cool, that’s easy enough to do, especially when the pricing is so good and they offer free returns.
I spent that night scrolling through the site looking for the best deals. They had tens of thousands of products, ranging from the most trendy designs to more staple clothing items. I picked out mostly shirts and tops, with a couple pairs of pants. I hesitated slightly before entering my financial information and reassured myself that so many other people had great experiences, and even if there was something wrong with one or two pieces it would be worth it. I finished entering my debit card numbers and hit submit, slightly excited by the idea I could afford new clothes and to be able to eat for the next month. I spent the next few days anxiously checking for any tracking information, and eventually it did update. I found myself checking the mail every day, hoping my package would show up.
The whole shipping process took about two weeks, which isn’t bad coming from China. They managed to pack all of my order in one of those large branded boxes. When I saw how much effort they put into branding it just reaffirmed that I made the right choice. Why would a scam site put so much effort into just the packaging? It just didn’t make sense to me.
I ripped open the box and found each item carefully packaged in a plastic zippered bag. I was planning on meeting up with some friend for drinks that day, so I dug for an outfit I could just throw on as I was walking out the door. I figured these came right from the warehouse, I shouldn’t have had to worry about washing anything before wearing it, it wasn’t like other people tried the clothes on and got germs on them.
I found the long sleeved plaid button up I ordered and put it on. I was amazed by how soft it was. The fit wasn’t perfect, but what off the rack clothes ever fit perfectly? With the help of my new shirt I felt more confident then I had in years. I spent that afternoon buzzing with excitement at the idea of showing off my new outfit. Through the day I found myself touching the fabric of my new shirt, even going as far as to touch my face with the sleeve when I was feeling anxious. Even the group of friends I met up with seemed impressed with the buttery feel of the fabric.
We spent the night wading through a drunken haze. For celebrating the end of the pandemic we hit the bottle hard and fast. We ended up staying out and getting shit faced. I’m not even sure if I remember making it back to my house.
The next day I woke up in the late afternoon with a stiff hangover and crusty eyes. As I drug myself to the bathroom for some Tylenol I realized I was still wearing my clothes from the night before. Admonishing myself for not trying the clothing website sooner, I caught a glimpse of my face in the bathroom mirror. Not only were my eyes crusty, they were bright red. Almost as though every vein in my eye was lit up by red neon. Red eyes are pretty common after a hangover, but the sticky yellow pus that coated my eyelashes wasn’t. I tried to wash my face, wondering if drunk me had done something sober me didn’t remember, but as I touched my eyes small ripples of pain radiated from them, almost as though I had a beach’s worth of sand in my eyes. It was then that I decided to go to the urgent care.
I started to rush out the door when I saw the box of clothes sitting in my living room. Quickly I dug through the box to find something less smoky and beer stained to wear. My hand landed on a vibrant red short sleeved shirt. Without a second thought I ran out the door to try and catch the next bus to the urgent care.
Once I arrive the woman at the counter gave me a quick glance and ushered me into an exam room. A nurse met me there and started taking down my information in between staring at my eyes and the ooze dripping from them. For them rushing me to the room it seemed to take ages for a doctor to come in. As the door clicked, waves of nausea and stomach pain seemed to hit me. The doctor gave me a quick glance and started asking me questions. After the prolonged questioning he declared that I had pink eye.
Pink eye, out of all things. How in the hell did I get pink eye? The doctor was fairly certain it was from an infection and not a virus, so he wrote me a prescription for antibiotics and sent me on my way.
The stomach pains didn’t ease, even as I found myself wandering through the pharmacy waiting for my prescription. I was looking at some anti nausea meds when everything went black.
When I woke up I was blinded by the light of a hospital room. Disoriented, I found my eyes wandering the room. They settled on the white board across from me. It had the typical information you see when you are in the hospital, like your nurse’s name, the doctor’s name, the day you were admitted; stuff like that. What caught my attention though was where the reason for admission was written. It said seizure, followed by lead poisoning. Seizure? I had never had a seizure in my life, and lead poisoning? Where in the hell did I get lead poisoning? All I ever did was exist in my apartment, it’s not like I was out licking car parts and eating paint chips.
I fumbled around the bed I was laying in and found the call button for the nurses. I pressed it and within seconds nurses and doctors came running in. They could tell I was confused, so the doctor sat on a stool and rolled to my bedside to explain what had happened.
It turns out I had blacked out at the pharmacy and went into full seizures. When I got to the hospital they stripped me down and put me in a gown before running tests. They ran a bunch of tests. I was jaundiced, anemic, and had encephalitis; which I’ve come to learn is swelling of the brain. Outside of the pink eye these symptoms are typical of lead poisoning. I had been unconscious for three days. They didn’t expect me to wake up, and warned me that I could experience things like hallucinations and difficulty moving, slowed reactions, and memory problems; which is what motivated me to type this out.
They asked if I had worked in any fields that often lead to this kind of poisoning, and when I explained that I didn’t they decided to call the FDA, CDC, and the local health department to try and rule out any environmental exposures. Lead poisoning this severe is extremely rare and they needed to rule out any environmental possibilities that could affect other people.
After listening to the doctors I slipped back out of consciousness. During the short periods I was awake I would open my eyes to find my room filled with agents and investigators from different agencies. They asked me so many questions that I don’t think I could remember them even if I tried. And no matter what it seemed like they just became frustrated from the dead end answers I gave.
The one thing I do remember them asking was for a key to my apartment. I told the nurse who was in the room to go through the bag of my stuff and give it to them. I wanted answers just as much as they did. While going through the bag to give the investigators my key they spotted my red shirt, and the tag on it. They asked if they could take it for testing; and seeing as how I wouldn’t be wearing it any time soon I had no problem turning it over. That’s also when the nurse gave me my phone.
It’s hard to look at the screen and be able to focus to type this, but I have to warn everyone. Yesterday the investigators came back. My shirt, the one I got from the cheap website, tested more than 40 times higher than the allowable lead content for clothing. My shirt poisoned me. Not just that, but the shirt I wore to the bar the night before all this started tested positive for human feces. You know, the literal shit that causes pink eye.
I haven’t been able to get much information from the investigators, but this brand is apparently notorious for that. Their clothing is so cheap because they use unregulated and untested dyes. Not just that but the factories they use are filled with human rights violations. Many of them don’t even have bathrooms, let alone running water, so factory workers are forced to urinate and relieve themselves just off to the side of where they are working. Because many of these companies are based in China, our government has no ability to shut them down, or to even stop them from selling online.
It gets even worse though, as if dying from a lead shirt wasn’t bad enough. As I’ve been typing this out I’ve received 18 notifications from my bank. That scam site, they’ve charged my card for $200, 18 times since I’ve been admitted to the hospital.
My condition hasn’t improved much since being here. Thanks to the lead poisoning my kidney function is so low they think I may need a transplant. The doctors say the swelling in my brain and seizures have probably caused permanent damage. All because I wanted to save a few dollars on a shirt. I can’t believe how naive I was and just how much it has actually cost me. Learn from my mistakes. I will never be the same person I was, even if I do survive to leave this hospital. Don’t trust websites you don’t know and don’t fall for the same tricks I did