Joe H.

People need to understand that these sites are to be avoided at all costs! I will explain why.

1 These sites are "Portals" where hundreds of Chinese factories get around their lack of an export licence by selling here.

2 The factories range from big factories to tiny back street single room operations.

3 When you buy here (or Light in a Box, Tidebuy, JJsHouse and hundreds more) you have no idea which factory you are buying from.

4 The quality ranges from quite good to total rubbish.

5 Customer service is almost non existent.

6 In the case of clothing, they steal the images from legitimate companies and make cheap copies, so the image you see is NOT a product they have made.

Bottom line: Buy a Lottery Ticket - at least you have a chance of winning!

I have to admit I'm quite limited in the kitchen so this site is a real find for me. Great range of recipes with fantastic ideas and videos that even I could follow. This is one site I have bookmarked as it is great to surf ever few weeks to get new ideas and inspirations. I love this site.

I had one personal experience with this site and my fiancé also had one experience and in both cases, it was an excellent. The site is based in Ireland and is unusual in that they make custom sizes at no extra cost.

After almost making a mistake and buying from a site called Tidebuy (a total scam), a friend recommended Laila Monroe and as me and Sarah were thinking of buying her wedding dress online, I was interested in checking them out. To do this, I bought a "surprise" cocktail dress (Christmas gift) for Sarah and to make sure I got it right, I chatted with them on live chat. I also spoke with them on Skype and at all times, they were very helpful in advising me about how to get Sarah's correct size without her knowing:-) When the dress arrived, it was perfect fit and looked amazing.

That helped us make the final decision to order her wedding dress but, being a traditionalist, I was not allowed know anything about the dress but when it arrived about six weeks ago, Sarah said it is stunning and very high quality with every little detail taken care of. And it fits perfectly. Sarah said she paid about $500 and reckons a similar one in the stores would have cost $1,500++ so $1,000 is a big saving. She also dealt with their customer service and said it was a pleasure from start to finish. Since then, two of her friends have also ordered so both me and Sarah are very happy to recommend Laila Monroe if you are looking for excellent quality, excellent value and unbeatable customer service!

Where do I start with this site? Sadly, it's just another of these (hundreds) of Chinese "portal" type sites and many seem to be linked. Most have "addresses" in Beijing but that is thousands of miles away from where most of the factories are located. These sites facilitate hundreds of factories to sell their products outside China. The factories steal the images from designers and then make cheap inferior copies. I have pics of some of the "designer" dresses that have been bought by people on these sites. Most are not very good and many don't even look like the original.

I've work in this business for the last 15 years and have been in many Chinese factories so I've seen the good and the bad. As I said, there are HUNDREDS of similar "portal" sites (e.g. Tidebuy, Light in the Box, DinoDirect, Peridress, DHGate and many more) where factories (mostly small) sell their products online. Some of these factories are ok with reasonable quality but some are a disaster. I've seen factories set up in a dirty single room with about 3 - 5 workers. If you buy from one of these sites, you have no idea which factory you are buying from. So it is like a lottery.

If anybody wants a "heads up" on any site, feel free to contact me. No guarantee I can help but since I know this business, I should be able to point you in the right direction.

As pointed out by others, these sites even use fake VeriSign and AcAfee badges. This is just one small sign to watch out for. A reputable company should be contactable by phone, Skype or similar. And if you see the same images on site after site after site with a wide range of professional models and photographic styles, heads cut off or faces blurred, then it's time to get out of there. What you are looking at are stolen images and what you can expect is a cheap rip off!

I've used many stock image sites over the years to get images for some of my "pet projects" (I'm not a heavy user) and really like Dreamstime site. On one occasion, I lost the image I'd downloaded months before and they allowed me to download again at no extra charge. Another time, I needed to get a bigger version of an image I'd downloaded about a year before and again they were great in allowing me to upgrade to the bigger image. As I say, I'm not a big user but I really like the site, the prices are reasonable and their customer service rocks.

In general terms, I quite like Facebook and it's good for keeping in touch with people as I live a long way from home. However, there are a few things that really hack me off.

For example, there are some businesses that use Facebook to gain new customers and then cheat them. In many cases, they openly promote counterfeit goods. The problem is that there is no way to report this to Facebook. Why? Surely Facebook has a responsibility to not to allow criminals to openly exploit their members.

I notice that one member here said "I love to hack" and that's why he likes this site. How sick can you get?

Hacking is an activity for scum with sick minds. What gives them the right to "hack" into people's computers or phones? In some cases, they destroy years of hard work by honest people. In other cases, they destroy lives. Just look at the "News of the World" hacking scandal.

It's just sick that somebody sets up a web site to "teach" people how to commit crime. But there could be an interesting "sting" here. Visit their site at your peril!

Do you really believe that a person with such a warped mind would allow visitors to their site without transferring some small "gift" to the visitors computer? I don't think so! Stay well clear, unless you're a total idiot.

We were looking for good online value and found Tidebuy on Facebook. It looked great BUT... yes there is a big BUT!

First, we (my fiance Sarah and me) clicked LIKE and they promise a $20 coupon. We never received it. There were many complaints on their pages about this. Even worse, more than 50% of the posts on their wall were people complaining - one lady received a wedding dress with a HOLE in the top layer, rips on the seams which were not sewn straight and rough scissor marks. Another received a dress that should have have lots of white or clear beads on the front - the dress she received had all BLACK beads. There were many other complaints. For some reason, during November, nobody from Tidebuy seemed to monitor the posts and a most of the comments were negative. Then this week, Tidebuy began to monitor the wall again and removed ALL the negative comments so that what people now see is only the positive ones. In other words, Tidebuy do not want people to know the truth.

Tidebuy is not a factory. It is a portal where hundreds of factories sell their products. ALL the images shown there are stolen from big designers and these factories make cheap copies of them. Some are quite good but many are a disaster. So while some people are lucky and get reasonable quality, many are not. It's like a lottery. Personally, for an important event such as a wedding or a prom, I would prefer to pay a little more and be sure of what we're getting than take a chance of being one of the many hundreds of unhappy customers.