How High-End Retailers Steal Your Money
Summary
Transcript
First things first, there is a high end retailer named Perch. P I r C h. They sell high end bathroom fixtures, high end kitchen fixtures, high end appliances. They just went out of business. Okay, I’m sorry to hear that. Okay. The only problem is that American Express right now is suing them for $33 million. Wow. Huh? $33 million? Yes. Let me explain. This retailer has locations around the country, okay? A lot of high end cities here in southern California, Glendale, Orange County, San Diego, and they took tremendous amounts of deposits for people to get their kitchen and bath fixtures delivered and took deposits.
Over 50% of them were through American Express. Now, slow play, slow pay, slow play, don’t deliver the merchandise. So people start to complain to the tune of a few hundred people, than a few hundred people turned into 500 complaints, which gets American Express’s attention. Needless to say, when you have a chargeback, which, you know, if you guys have ever disputed something with your credit card, the retailer gets notified about this and they get a chargeback.
And what happens is you have to basically, you’re guilty until proven innocent, and you have to prove that what the customer is saying is not true. Okay? So let’s just use a round figure of $1,000. You sell somebody something for a thousand, the customer is unhappy with it, and they dispute their credit card. The credit card company holds that, you know, thousand dollars. Until you justify that the customer is right, wrong, whatever, and then they release the funds to whoever is correct, either back to the customer or back to the merchant.
Now, flash forward, and you have all these customers that are not getting their merchandise at perch. And what happens is that American Express starts to get concerned and they sit there and they say, wait a second, you guys aren’t delivering merchandise. So American Express steps forward and says, you know, there may be fraudulent activity here and 500 complaints turn into 1800 complaints. So you’ve got 1800 people that never got what they were supposed to get.
Now, the thousands of customers, too, that they’re not servicing the appliances and things like that, and those people are furious, too. Let’s just put those people to the side. The angry customers will deal with them later. I’m just talking about people that didn’t get what they were supposed to get. These people went out and there are $33 million worth of charges where people did not get the merchandise.
$33 million. That works out to $18,300 per charge. Okay. For the 1800 transactions. Okay, well, that’s a ton. I mean, of, think of the ad. Think of what you. When was the last time you bought something for 18 grand on your credit card? Okay. Do you understand the level of people that that perch was dealing with was such a high end group that that’s what they, you know, I mean, the high end appliances, you know, those things, those things that you see in tv from the million dollar listing shows.
It’s those customers that got completely hosed by this. Now, flash forward. And these people aren’t paying for anything. Now here’s the, here is the best part about this whole thing. American Express reaches out to perch to say, hey, you’ve got to give us a response on these, you know, these complaints. What does perch do? Nothing. Not, well, they’re wrong. I’m talking nothing. They don’t respond to anything. So the customers can’t get their money.
Okay? Isn’t that wild? So think about this. There is consumer rights and merchant rights. The merchant isn’t responding to anything. So they can’t sit there and American Express, what they do, because American Express is horrible to deal with as a merchant. They believe the client before they believe you, but the merchant is not responding. So American Express is saying, listen, Dan, we can’t give you your refund yet because we haven’t heard from them.
That’s not true, guys. There are statutory answers that people have to do people have an obligation to respond to these complaints within a set period of time or the customer wins. American Express, right now, think about this, is losing $1. 6 million per day on perch alone. Isn’t that crazy? So these complaints that aren’t being answered to are costing them an absolute bloody fortune. So how come nobody’s been arrested yet? How come nobody’s been picked up yet for this? No.
Okay, get it. It’s up here. It’s higher end. And because they’re so high end, they deal with this very, a very snooty attitude with how they’d handle this. The CFO is like, we have no comment. We have nothing to say. Well, you’re gonna have a comment when you get indicted for something like this because what’s gonna happen on this is that there’s gonna be criminality to pay because this is just the beginning of this worldpay deals with Visa and Mastercard.
That’s their credit card processor that does the other side of it. You know, that’s the non American Express side, the Visa, Mastercard, Discover. Okay, they have another merchant that deals with that. They’re owed over $10 million right now, maybe more. So you got $10 million right now that’s owed there and they haven’t been paid. So you’ve got one merchant, one merchant that has cheated people out of $50 million.
Isn’t that crazy, guys? Absolutely crazy. Now what you’re going to see more of right now is this. Is anybody out there? Anybody out there a perch customer or know anybody who’s a perch customer? First of all, because I’d love this because I’ll help you get your money back within weeks. Okay. First of all, because they have to respond. Just because perch is not responding doesn’t mean these people are not going to get their money.
And don’t let American Express say they have an obligation to answer this. We don’t know what’s going on internally. I do. They’re out of business. They’ve already issued statements that they’re done. Plus, here’s the other thing. They’re getting sued by their employees that they didn’t pay payroll taxes on, didn’t do proper wages. So you think that this company just had a shift in judgment and just took some money and it didn’t work out? No.
This was their modus operandi. These guys were criminals. Okay? So you’re going to see so many people go out of business moving forward. I wanted you to see this because it’s just absolutely beautiful down here today. So we’re going to film right here for a second. Now, think about this world pay. We’re concerned about this company, if this company is going to stay open or not. They’re not open.
They’ve already announced that they’re done. But what you’re going to see is this. Anybody that you entrust with anything right now, starting with your automobile. If your automobile is not fixed in a timely fashion, get concerned, show up there and inspect, you know, your automobile. Make sure they’re working on, hey, we don’t have the parts yet, that’s one thing. But if it starts to take an excessive amount of time, question this, because these people could be going out of business.
If you have a contractor that is taking an excessive amount of time, same thing. Make sure that you know that this person is going to be in business right now because so many of these people are going out of business. You’re going to see home builders, and I’m getting stories sent to me out of Texas, out of lovely Austin, Texas and the surrounding cities about the problems that they’re going to have moving forward.
Okay? So, so you’re gonna see builders go out of business. Okay? And the problem with this is it’s just a matter of time and people are going to be giving deposits that they’re not going to get back. You’re going to see hundreds of businesses that you never thought was going to go out of business, go out of business. Okay? And just because they’re a higher end retailer like Perch.
Perch is a, you know, it looks like a den of thieves right now. Okay. So it’s gonna be interesting to see what happens moving forward with these guys. But man, oh man, 50 50, $50 million. Okay, one more shot of the beautiful waves. Nice day out here. But again, all these businesses that are going out of business, this is going to be the beginning. And of course, people are going to be shocked.
But the employees at first that were played with that weren’t given paychecks for a couple pay periods and taxes weren’t taken out of their checks, they’re going to catch up to these people because what happens is that people cut corners thinking that they’ll make up for it later. How do you make up for $50 million? So share your thoughts on this one far because this was absolutely amazing.
But read the story below because I found the best story that broke it down. And American Express, again, if you have ever had a chargeback in your business, you know, they’re awful. Okay? And yes, you get people that complain and I’m just gonna ruin your day and give you a charge back. You know, you get things like that that happen to vendors. And I’ve had people write me about things like this.
And, you know, the idea with it is that you try to just get those disputes resolved as quick as possible so you get your money and you don’t have to worry about it. Okay? So let me know what you think about that. Okay. Share your thoughts on this. Just a quick video today, but a couple things that are very interesting. Jerome Powell says maybe people need to get ready for hire for longer.
Do you see how they’re kind of setting us up, guys? You know, interest rates are going to stay up here for a while. Should get used to it. Okay? And, you know, then you talk to real estate brokers who sit there and just say, listen, this is the time. This is the time to go out and buy a house. Things have never been better. You got to move forward because when they drop rates, the prices are just going to shoot up.
Well, here’s the thing. California has got more and more restrictive rules for landlords. Why you would want to be a landlord in California, California is beyond me because I have had so many of you reach out to me and tell me how awful it is to kick somebody out and how difficult it is right now and how you just not getting caught up with these people, and they are just, you know, taking advantage of people over and over and over again.
And then you have the squatting situation, and it’s even worse. Mayor Karen Bass in LA steps forward, and she said, we want more rich people to buy houses because there’s a rule, if you buy a house over $5 million, 5% goes to the homeless program. They already can account for $24 billion. But she wants more money to go to the homeless because we can eradicate homeless with this program.
Okay. Okay. These are people that have never run a business, never run a social program they didn’t like because they just want to fleece it. And we’re supposed to sit there and think that this is all a big deal and it’s going to help this problem. It’s not. My daughter was in Japan for two weeks and said, dad, you have to go with me because it was the most amazing place.
There’s no homeless, there’s no drug addicts, nobody’s drunk on a street corner. There is. I never felt unsafe ever while I was there. Oh, okay. You know what I mean? We have that problem here, guys, where people feel unsafe constantly. And, you know, but again, you know, safest country in the world, right? Okay. We’re on the precipice of a housing problem right now, where you’re going to see housing prices drop in a big way.
Okay? It’s just a matter of time because first things first month over month, sales here, this is starting to emulate other states. We have an inventory that is ever increasing right now. You have more people wanting to sell their houses right now than you have in the last few years. You’ve got sales dropping 8% month over month. That’s huge, guys. Right now, you cannot continue with this. You cannot continue with the prices way up here and not have, you know, a glut.
Right now. People are losing their jobs. People cannot get these loans. Interest rates are firmly above 7%. You know, I don’t want to talk about the same things. But the problem that you have is that it’s a real problem. It’s not dropping. Interest rates are not just going to drop overnight. Powell’s just not going to lower the, you know, interest rates. It’s just not going to change everything.
And you’re going to see things drop to the floor. That’s not going to happen. Okay, so you haven’t seen anything yet, guys. Haven’t seen anything yet. The foreclosures are at an all time high. All I keep getting is all this, you know, ammo from the foreclosure friends of mine about how busy it’s getting. Wow. Dan, we’re. Look at this, look at this, look at this. This. But people have to still go out there.
And yes, people are stupidly making offers above and beyond the asking price of a house. Good luck. Good luck. People don’t want to sit there and realize that they’re going to overpay for something that’s going to be worth less. If you follow people like Scott Walters, you’re going to see this happen again. Scott Walters is a real estate broker out of the Santa Barbara area. Good guy, good friend of mine.
And he had what he called a depreciating asset where he was caught up in it last time and just kept saying, you know, real estate’s not going to go down, and ended up having to make deals with the banks to get rid of property. Okay? So you’re going to see this happen again. Whether you believe it or not, this is what’s going to have to happen. So, you know, people are getting laid off left and right.
Economy’s tight, jobs are tight, you know, but hey, it’s all good. Don’t worry about it. All of you brokers out there that write me and tell me how it’s never been a better time. You’re an idiot. You guys are just stupid because this is not a good time to buy a house right now. It just isn’t. Okay. Now, again, there are some people out there that have a lot of money.
I get people out there that send me stuff and they’re traveling the world and they’ve got $30 million in the bank. Those people, I’m not talking about. I’m talking about the working folk that get a paycheck every two weeks. Those people need to be concerned about where things are headed right now and if the company they work for is even going to be there right now. So I’m amazed at what people will buy.
Okay. OJ Simpson’s credit card is going to be auctioned off. His bank of America Visa card that’s expired, okay? Someone’s going to auction it off. Some guy originally bought it on eBay, and now that OJ has passed, he thinks it’s going to be worth, you know, thousands of dollars for somebody, okay? And I don’t know what the fascination would be if you walk into a restaurant and you throw down the juices, you know, old expired credit card as a joke.
But needless to say, you know, what’s it gonna get you? Okay? So please don’t forget to hit the like button. Please don’t forget to subscribe to the channel. And you want to get ahold of me. Hello, at I allegedly. And if you guys are. If you’re concerned about the company that you’re working with, it’s over with, it’s done. It’s too much. Okay? If you think that you’re getting screwed by these guys and you’ve heard story time after story, storytime after story time, investigate and check it out because they’re having problems immediately.
Good luck to each and every one of you. Just a quick video today and so much more to cover, and I’ll see you guys very soon. .
See more of I Allegedly on their Public Channel and the MPN I Allegedly channel.
