In his post on consumer complaints website HelloPeter, “Stephan P” calls it “one of the very best and most believable scams I've ever seen”. He’s referring to “Barestep”, which marketed its shoes in Facebook and Instagram adverts as being South African-designed to “promote natural movement and improve sensory feedback”.
Until a few days ago, Barestep’s website carried an appealing story of how “Mike and Jodie” met while hiking up Lion’s Head in Cape Town and, after striking up a conversation about Jodie’s shoes, they went on to become friends, business partners and founders of Barestep.
“Not even all my recent cybersecurity training at work made me doubt [their story],” Stephan said.
The Barestep site was launched in the first week of March, offering four versions of lace-up lightweight shoes in different colours. The men’s and women’s versions were identical and priced at R1,090 a pair, apparently slashed from R3,000.
There is only an e-mail address as a means of contact — no phone number and no physical address, which are a legal requirement in terms of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act.
The site carries 24 five-star rave reviews, all in perfect English, by customers saying they had received their shoes and were loving them.
“The sustainable materials and responsible manufacturing practices make me feel good about my purchase, while the trendy design and outstanding performance have made these my go-to shoes for any occasion,” said “Nadine de Villiers”.
“I couldn't be happier with my decision to support this fantastic South African brand!”
But Stephan’s experience, with that of hundreds of others, has been less happy.
He paid Barestep R2,180 for two pairs; one for him and one for his wife. The promised delivery time was seven to 10 days, but he still doesn’t have his shoes, along with many others who have taken to HelloPeter and Trustpilot — and sent e-mails to me — to share their experiences.
“I am almost certain [the Barestep team] has used ChatGPT to generate those amazing reviews,” Stephan said. “All are very well written and about 70 words long — what are the chances?”
Interestingly, at least one unhappy customer has received a refund. Lynn of Newlands told me that having been given several false delivery promises by Barestep’s “Laura”, she threatened to “take further action” and was promptly refunded her R1,090.
Earlier this month, “the Barestep team” began responding to HelloPeter complaints with this notice: “We assure you that Barestep is a legitimate business, and we take pride in providing high quality barefoot shoes ...
“The recent delays have been caused by a series of unforeseen logistical issues within our supply chain. Promises were made to us by our partners, and we, in turn, made promises to you based on that information.
“We are aware of isolated social media posts claiming that Barestep is a scam,” the notice read, adding that the company had “temporarily paused our intake of new orders” to focus on delivering current orders.
That pause takes the form of a statement on the Barestep website that its shoes are “sold out”.
Here comes my top tip: when you see goods advertised, particularly via Facebook or Instagram, find out whether they are what they are said to be by doing a reverse image search on Google.
Late model iPhones make this easy: simply capture the image, crop it as tightly as you can and save it in your photo gallery. Then click on the photo in your gallery, tap the options on the bottom left of your screen and scroll down to “Search with Google Lens”.
That’s how I found out that the Barestep shoes are not proudly South African at all. AliExpress — part of the big Chinese online retail group Alibaba — is selling them for about R161, excluding tax.
Earlier this week, I e-mailed Barestep, asking if the company had delivered any shoes to its customers. I also put it to them that at best the shoes were being sold at outrageously rip-off prices on the back of a fabricated “proudly South African” story or at worst it’s a scam, as Stephan had concluded, there being no intention to deliver any shoes to anyone.
“Which is it?” I asked.
I’ve received no response, but I’ve since found out that it’s the former. The company contracted to do the warehousing and fulfilment of the Barestep orders told me that a consignment of those shoes had arrived at their warehouse early this week, the first consignment reportedly being withheld by customs officials.
That means the shoes were aggressively marketed before a single pair was available to be dispatched to customers.
It’s not illegal to make an outrageous profit: willing buyer, willing seller applies, and we consumers can choose to do our research before pre-purchase, or not.
But it is illegal — in terms of the Consumer Protection Act — for a company to market its goods “in a manner that is reasonably likely to imply a false or misleading representation concerning those goods ... or is deceptive in any way”.
Clearly, the story about the shoes being the brainchild of a couple of Capetonian hikers — which was removed from the website this week — was deception, and those rave reviews had to have been fake because no-one got their shoes until this week.
Moral of the story: never buy from online sites that only provide an e-mail address as a contact, and check the marketing story by doing reverse image searches on product images to find out where else they have appeared online.
Knowledge is power, and it’s never been so easy to come by.
* Contact Knowler for advice with your consumer issues via e-mail: consumer@knowler.co.za or on Twitter: @wendyknowler
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