Juliana F.
Cheap Chinese product, sold on Etsy for a lot less money
I bought this rucksack for £32 for my son after learning about it from another parent. The "about" section of the website says this is a family business with some charitable angle, and the images make the rucksack look like a high quality product, however it is taking ages to arrive (10 days and counting...). Imagine my surprise, then, when I used the tracking link to discover it is being shipped direct from some factory in China and not from the company's "primary warehouse" as they claim on their website. Given that - and the many terrible reviews here - I lost faith in this rucksack and began looking for a replacement, before it even arrived. So imagine my additional surprise when I quickly found the identical rucksack, illustrated with the identical marketing photos, for £24 on Etsy UK. Trustpilot won't let me post a link but you're more than welcome to visit the site and search on "waterproof rucksack." The seller is Uche Designs, who also imply they're a small, local business that sell locally-designed products. This is clearly a cheap, crappy product, white labeled by a Chinese manufacturer which in turn slaps on each company's logo. Then More than a Backpack et al generate a back story about their beloved [product name goes here], et voila! In short, a cynical operation not to mention a rip off. UPDATE 29/08/23: coincidentally, this backpack arrived today, the same day I posted my review. As I suspected it came jammed into a clear plastic bag with no tags or proper label, which was in turn jammed into a generic grey plastic bag and messily wrapped with packing tape. Avoid.
Response from More than a BackpackAug 30, 2023
Hi Juliana, Thank you for your feedback and we are sorry you feel this way. We've checked your order and it does look like it was delivered within the 5-10 working days stated at checkout. To the UK we are usually seeing more around the 5-day delivery time. Sorry that your order seems to be more the 10-day timeframe. Regarding, selling, and shipping Chinese products. Yes, you're correct we ship and buy out of China but that certainly doesn't mean that they are cheap and poor quality. This is a common misconception that Chinese means poor quality. We make sure our items are good quality and we take on feedback from our customer. This doesn’t take the away that we are a family business, our suppliers are just based in China, which is exactly the nearly same as every other fashion retailer in the UK (and world). The item that you bought the Mochilas backpack, we've seen competitors selling similar items, but it is not the same as ours. We have gone through 3 manufacturers now to make this item bigger, stronger, and better quality than ever before. We've improved many areas of this item including, strength of straps (both back and top), strength of internal compartments, quality of zips, water resistant capabilities. We’ve changed many things order to make this a great school backpack at an affordable price. We would be extremely confident if you purchased the copycat item from Etsy, you would see the quality difference straight away. We also ship out from China due to the fact we can ship across the globe to many countries without long delays. We can achieve 5-10 business days to Europe and 7-14 business days to USA and other countries. Again, we've found a very good warehouse that gives us a great service with excellent speed. We want to be able to offer items to anyone across the world at a great price. We hope this has helped answer some of your queries. If you are still unhappy then we can give you a full refund on return of the item to our UK return address. Please contact customer service on [email protected] and they can help you. Once again, we are sorry if you're not 100% satisfied. More than a backpack