A Fishy Tale

Facebook has an annoying habit of putting adverts on my feed for things I have no interest in whatsoever, and repeating them, ad nauseam, on a daily basis; however, on Tuesday I noticed an advert that really caught my attention and I sent the image to Hay for her to have a look at.

It was for a rather attractive fish table lamp that I thought would go well in our new caravan, given it's on a lake. I had clicked on the advert and was taken to a page where you could enter your details in order to be kept informed of other products sold by the company, but got distracted and never completed the form.

The lamp was advertised for some ridiculously low price (around £50 for the one with 2 fish), which Hay and I thought very suspicious. Anyway, yesterday I attempted to find the advert again on my feed, which I thought would be simple due to their repeat nature, but I couldn't find it anywhere. This also made me suspicious and I sensed a scam that Facebook had removed.

Last night after giving up all hope of seeing the ad again, it suddenly popped up again on my Facebook feed. I really suspected a scam but, because the price was reasonable and I can afford to lose £50, I went ahead and bought one, receiving confirmation from a Chinese address, despite the website saying the items are made in the USA, which I very much doubt.

After having made the purchase I did a Samsung Bixby search on the image I'd captured (Bixby looks for similar images on the web) and discovered almost identical fish lamps (below) on auction websites advertising lamps made by  the famous Canadian-American designer and architect Frank Gehry, who designed the Bilbao Guggenheim museum, and his lamps sell for thousands of dollars each. They were made in the 80s from plastic ColorCore shards glued to an armature to give the impression of fish scales.

I've heard of these Facebook scams before where suppliers rip off the genuine article and sell copies through Facebook, most of the scammers being based in Russia. Some take a payment and send the copy, but others never even send the item. Only time will tell whether I receive said fish.