“Record haul of ‘fake’ goods found after shop raided – but staff evade capture through secret underground exit”
Good, now go after the numerous ‘fantasy’ merch stores next.
That’s just what a Freddo costs these days.
I hope they came with a golden ticket and a personal tour of the chocolate factory.
The UK is so weird in some ways. This is a major tourism district and we let obvious and rampant criminality occur in plain site. Have some sort of taskforce to walk these shops every day.
Eli5 why we can’t just shut these places down?
Was this accidentally inputted wrong into the card machine.
Should have been £8.99 that’s why you check the amount.
> Adam Hug, Labour leader of Westminster City Council, said: “We have known for a long time that US candy stores rip off customers, but charging £900 for two packets of sweets is a new low, even for the unscrupulous people who run these rackets.
> Trading standards officers have seized more than £1m in fake and unsafe goods over the past two years.
> The items impounded in the latest raid included 2,892 American food products, more than 30,000 cigarettes, 3,182 single-use vapes, 598 nicotine pouches, 226 heated tobacco pouches and 61 travel adaptors or power banks.
Since the candy stores being fronts for criminals is an open secret, the police should really do more to crack down on it. It seems pretty easy to do. Same with the scammers on the bridge. (Police can afford resources arresting young people for thinking of protesting, surely they can catch the real criminals too? They’ve already given up on the phone thieves.)
what about this candy store makes it US style, exactly…?
That level of over charging cannot possibly be deliberate. It’s just too much to get away with. It will trigger a complaint and they’re no change the payment provider honours the payment to the merchant and the victim will get their money back.
Sounds very much like a mistake led to a complaint which led to authorities uncovering counterfeit stock. The real story is being buried by a headline that points at an easily disputed card transaction.
I mean, what are they going to do if you don’t pay? Call the police?
I somehow doubt it!
Another thing these sketchy stores do is overcharge you by ‘mistake’.
Three years ago my wife who was visiting from overseas dragged me into one of these places against my cautioning to pick up some souvenirs and trinkets for family back home.
A couple of crappy magnets and keychains later the guy billed me for £7.50. And guess how much he charged my card? £75.
I noticed it right away and asked him ‘Did you just falsely charge me £75 instead of £7.50?’ His face changed and he started stalling. I told him I’m not leaving his store until he initiates a refund or gives me back the money in cash.
10 minutes of him haggling with some imaginary manager on the phone and trying to convince me that a refund was ‘automatic’ (no idea how), he finally imitated a refund in his terminal and gave me a receipt. My bank refunded it in a week or thereabouts.
Avoid these stores at all if you can. If you must for whatever reason buy something, always use cash.
[deleted]
That’s just US tariffs kicking in
Bloody inflation
If you go into one of these shops you deserve the cost. If you play the cup game on Westminster bridge you deserve the loss. If you transfer your life savings to a romance scammer, the bank shouldn’t pay. If you are willingly scammed you deserve it, ok?
This just sounds like complete nonsense. What’s the story here? The fake goods, the customer being charged £899 instead of £8.99 or the secret exit?
I paid 60£ there for some bags of chips for my kids. There were no prices advertised. I should have refused.
But hey, the kids wanted it.
Anyone who goes into these shops is a fucking idiot.
Honestly? Westminster council just don’t care enough to shut these down. Sure there are ‘motions’ to sort this all out, but if they were really conscious of tourists getting ripped off, the blight on the streets, the sheer abundance of them, they would fall over themselves to shut them down. Yes there are roadblocks – but if you wanted them gone, wouldn’t you do everything in your power to do so? Or at least expedite the process?
In reality, landlords make good money from these and Westminster Council clearly don’t care about the reputation of London at this point.
There were raids back in April on Turkish Barbers and other convenience stores that were believe to be money laundering. The BBC article is here – [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3677xzk56no](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3677xzk56no)
The news report said that often the shop is back up and operating the next day or sooner.
Does this include the dodgy souvenir shops? Because there’s one on Shaftesbury avenue that I went to at the insistence of a visiting friend. We didn’t want souvenirs, but someone had told my friend that the phone shop which was inside the shop sold some part he needed. Well souvenir shop owner screamed at us to use the other entrance if we needed the phone shop. We were flabbergasted and speechless and our delayed response elicited an even more relentlessly angry reaction from him. I just responded “and what are you gonna do?” really loudly and he backed off. I realised these assholes probably thought I was a tourist and that he probably threatens tourists all the time. Scumbags the lot of them.
Where there leopards in the sweet shop?
Sorry. That website just gave me cancer with all the ads and popups
wtf is this website, I can’t see the article between those ads lol
Can’t believe we’re still dealing with this (and not even successfully) in 2025.
Surely they didn’t actually pay £900?! I mean, come on.
Silly boys, that’s the price to lander money.
I only pay in cash overseas. For exactly this reason too, there’s scummy mfs in every city
Should have been more!
“Yea hello MasterCard, I dispute these charges here is my police complaint number. Thank you for the refund”.
“That’s 899”
“Go fuck yourself” ?
The first person to set one of these shops up must be fuming. The perfect scamola living ghetto fabulous and now the net is closing in because loads copied.
33 comments
“Record haul of ‘fake’ goods found after shop raided – but staff evade capture through secret underground exit”
Good, now go after the numerous ‘fantasy’ merch stores next.
That’s just what a Freddo costs these days.
I hope they came with a golden ticket and a personal tour of the chocolate factory.
The UK is so weird in some ways. This is a major tourism district and we let obvious and rampant criminality occur in plain site. Have some sort of taskforce to walk these shops every day.
Eli5 why we can’t just shut these places down?
Was this accidentally inputted wrong into the card machine.
Should have been £8.99 that’s why you check the amount.
> Adam Hug, Labour leader of Westminster City Council, said: “We have known for a long time that US candy stores rip off customers, but charging £900 for two packets of sweets is a new low, even for the unscrupulous people who run these rackets.
> Trading standards officers have seized more than £1m in fake and unsafe goods over the past two years.
> The items impounded in the latest raid included 2,892 American food products, more than 30,000 cigarettes, 3,182 single-use vapes, 598 nicotine pouches, 226 heated tobacco pouches and 61 travel adaptors or power banks.
Since the candy stores being fronts for criminals is an open secret, the police should really do more to crack down on it. It seems pretty easy to do. Same with the scammers on the bridge. (Police can afford resources arresting young people for thinking of protesting, surely they can catch the real criminals too? They’ve already given up on the phone thieves.)
what about this candy store makes it US style, exactly…?
That level of over charging cannot possibly be deliberate. It’s just too much to get away with. It will trigger a complaint and they’re no change the payment provider honours the payment to the merchant and the victim will get their money back.
Sounds very much like a mistake led to a complaint which led to authorities uncovering counterfeit stock. The real story is being buried by a headline that points at an easily disputed card transaction.
I mean, what are they going to do if you don’t pay? Call the police?
I somehow doubt it!
Another thing these sketchy stores do is overcharge you by ‘mistake’.
Three years ago my wife who was visiting from overseas dragged me into one of these places against my cautioning to pick up some souvenirs and trinkets for family back home.
A couple of crappy magnets and keychains later the guy billed me for £7.50. And guess how much he charged my card? £75.
I noticed it right away and asked him ‘Did you just falsely charge me £75 instead of £7.50?’ His face changed and he started stalling. I told him I’m not leaving his store until he initiates a refund or gives me back the money in cash.
10 minutes of him haggling with some imaginary manager on the phone and trying to convince me that a refund was ‘automatic’ (no idea how), he finally imitated a refund in his terminal and gave me a receipt. My bank refunded it in a week or thereabouts.
Avoid these stores at all if you can. If you must for whatever reason buy something, always use cash.
[deleted]
That’s just US tariffs kicking in
Bloody inflation
If you go into one of these shops you deserve the cost. If you play the cup game on Westminster bridge you deserve the loss. If you transfer your life savings to a romance scammer, the bank shouldn’t pay. If you are willingly scammed you deserve it, ok?
This just sounds like complete nonsense. What’s the story here? The fake goods, the customer being charged £899 instead of £8.99 or the secret exit?
I paid 60£ there for some bags of chips for my kids. There were no prices advertised. I should have refused.
But hey, the kids wanted it.
Anyone who goes into these shops is a fucking idiot.
Honestly? Westminster council just don’t care enough to shut these down. Sure there are ‘motions’ to sort this all out, but if they were really conscious of tourists getting ripped off, the blight on the streets, the sheer abundance of them, they would fall over themselves to shut them down. Yes there are roadblocks – but if you wanted them gone, wouldn’t you do everything in your power to do so? Or at least expedite the process?
In reality, landlords make good money from these and Westminster Council clearly don’t care about the reputation of London at this point.
There were raids back in April on Turkish Barbers and other convenience stores that were believe to be money laundering. The BBC article is here – [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3677xzk56no](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3677xzk56no)
The news report said that often the shop is back up and operating the next day or sooner.
Does this include the dodgy souvenir shops? Because there’s one on Shaftesbury avenue that I went to at the insistence of a visiting friend. We didn’t want souvenirs, but someone had told my friend that the phone shop which was inside the shop sold some part he needed. Well souvenir shop owner screamed at us to use the other entrance if we needed the phone shop. We were flabbergasted and speechless and our delayed response elicited an even more relentlessly angry reaction from him. I just responded “and what are you gonna do?” really loudly and he backed off. I realised these assholes probably thought I was a tourist and that he probably threatens tourists all the time. Scumbags the lot of them.
Where there leopards in the sweet shop?
Sorry. That website just gave me cancer with all the ads and popups
wtf is this website, I can’t see the article between those ads lol
Can’t believe we’re still dealing with this (and not even successfully) in 2025.
Surely they didn’t actually pay £900?! I mean, come on.
Silly boys, that’s the price to lander money.
I only pay in cash overseas. For exactly this reason too, there’s scummy mfs in every city
Should have been more!
“Yea hello MasterCard, I dispute these charges here is my police complaint number. Thank you for the refund”.
“That’s 899”
“Go fuck yourself” ?
The first person to set one of these shops up must be fuming. The perfect scamola living ghetto fabulous and now the net is closing in because loads copied.
Comments are closed.