Retail store owner destroys "Shopping Made Fun" app "Wish" on Facebook

If you head over to Facebook you may be able to catch a glimpse of an advertising disaster occurring in real-time. Perhaps a soon to be dinosaur in its natural habitat. You'd better hurry, though- there's a good chance that Wish will delete the below sponsored post once someone from their team reads the comments.

First let's all get on the same page: what is Wish?

In a nutshell it's an Amazon competitor filled with lots of very cheap but good looking products that sell for pennies on the dollar. The product is typically shipped directly from the seller but Wish can also offer warehousing. It's the third method of distribution that's causing a ruckus: 3rd party retail partners.

They call this part of their business "Wish Local"

Well-Meaning Facebook Ad

Wish is currently running a Facebook advertisement recruiting retail store owners to become Wish distribution locations. The elevator pitch: retail store owners get free foot traffic by allowing Wish customers to pick up their shipments in their retail store.

Uhoh It's Tom Zalewski

It sounds like a win/win on paper, but don't tell that to Tom Zalewski; he's the owner of a Mobile Phone Repair Shop in Chicago called CellzRepairz. This holiday season he partnered with Wish in hopes of bringing more people into his store.

Mr. Zalewski's review condenses everything he's thinking into the first 3 words, "Wish is trash."

But he doesn't stop there. He continues for another 475 words of relentless truth hurt bombs (that's 478 total for those counting at home) and explains why no retail owner should ever partner with Wish.

Here is his full proclamation:

Wish is trash.

They ask you how much you want to recieve up front.
You reply to what you (can think) you can handle.

They ship you one box in the beginning, just 1. After you finish 1/4 of that box, theyll ship you another. You distribute some of those to customers, you then receive another box. You organize, package that box. You wait for these wishers to come in, you receive another two boxes. Well. Now you are stuck with 4 boxes that are not finished. They are 4 big boxes. That is about 160 items or or less, average is about 40 items per box from what I had. I had 13 boxes in my store before December. 13! That is around 520 items, that is needed to be distributed to wishers. That does not include the individually names items that I had ( later changing to code)

Anyone wondering why they changed the names to code? Because in the case of someone not picking up a package, it is illegal for you to provide a package to someone, with another persons name on it, so they changed it to code making YOU the "warehouse" time more consumed by organizing.

I run a business. Not a warehouse. Their sales pitch, even got me.

"get more customers into your store"

It worked. What DOES NOT WORK. Is the time that is taken away from MY BUSINESS to fill the pockets of these silicon online entrepreneurs. They do not care about you " the partner " or the packages that are being delivered to your shop. They do not have a partner support line, everything is done via email if you have any issues, some people report not getting replies for over 72 hours.

I had my own customers, turn around and leave because I was helping a wisher find the QR code on their app. My job is not to help wishers find the qr code. That is WISHES JOB to help them locate the qr code. My customer that turned around wouldve provided me with an $80 profit for a service I provide. The wisher i was helping was only providing me with .50 profit ( for 2 packages )

WISH IS A SCAM for both consumer, and partners.

Every single one of these packaged boxes here in my back what was going to be my office in 2020, is consumed by all the packages I had to box up for wish to send me labels ot send the packages back.

I terminated the program. It is almost 2 months. And the wish products are still here in my store.

To some wish may work, but thats if you do not know how to bring clients to your shop. If you are good at marketing I would not recommend wish in my opinion. It is a complete waste of time.

Ouch.
That hurt.
Bad.

What makes it worse is that Wish is paying money to promote his negative review. And it's working! Depending on how you look at it.

As retail shop owners chime in to confirm Tom's criticism:

Others are thanking the group for collectively saving their butts- they had considered partnering with Wish but stumbled upon Tom's review and decided against it.

Don't feel too bad for Wish. The company is worth $8+ Billion dollars.

The bigger question here is how will Wish fix the problem (and their image) or will they abandon the retail distribution market completely? That remains to be seen, but before Wish does anything else, I suggest they delete that sponsored post.

The idea might look good on paper but there is a reason Papyrus went out of business. (ZING!)

Have you used the Wish app as a buyer or seller? Do you like it? Let us know in the comments.

Want to start a new conversation about Wish? Head on over to the Wish for Android Forum.

[Original post on Facebook]