A year ago I returned a jumper from Harper Manchester, a longstanding family business in the heart of the city centre run by John and Alice Harper.

Almost 12 months to the day, I received the same jumper back in the post from a warehouse in China, with a sticker on it saying the return had ‘bounced’.

That’s because Harper Manchester doesn’t exist. The supposed, quintessential Mancunian couple John and Alice don’t exist either. They exist only in AI generated images to help scammers sell cheap clothing online to unsuspecting customers.

Click here to get the biggest stories straight to your inbox in our Daily Newsletter

The people behind the con send out poor quality items made from cheap fabrics across the UK, sold for a fraction of the price on the likes of Amazon and AliExpress.

Once customers received the items, often overpriced and nothing like they were described, they face time-consuming struggles to try and claim a refund, while having to foot the bill for packaging and returning the clothing back to China themselves.

Following an investigation from the Manchester Evening News last year, Harper Manchester has taken down its website and Meta has removed scam ads from Facebook advertising the store and its perpetual ‘final ever closing down sale’.

As part of the investigation, we ordered an item from the website to see if the complaints about the store on Trust Pilot were true.

The ‘Marisa Chic Contrast Sweater’ that I ordered took a total of 21 days to arrive – quite the wait for something supposedly coming from a shop on King Street.

And a quick reverse image search online confirmed the sweater wasn’t “thoughtfully crafted” to reflect “the spirit of Manchester,” as the brand claims their clothing does – but was instead being sold on various other websites, such as Amazon and Temu.

Harper Manchester listed the piece of clothing as originally costing £139.95 but reduced to £29.95 as part of its ‘closing down sale’.

After finishing our investigation, I tried to return the piece of clothing, but with no standard returns process, I was forced to email Harper Manchester and barter with them to send the item back.

It took a total of 16 emails before I was able to settle the return with ‘Alice Harper’. In the back and forth I was offered a partial refund of the item, gradually increasing from 10% to 45%, to prevent me from the hassle of the ‘slow and expensive’ return.

One of the emails read: “I’m really sorry to hear the order wasn’t quite what you hoped for, it’s never been our intention to let you down.

“John and I have been running this little store with so much love for years, but we’re now in the middle of closing down because of financial struggles and it’s been one of the hardest decisions we’ve ever had to make.

“Since we had to shut our local shop, everything now ships from our last warehouse abroad and returns have become slow, expensive and sometimes they don’t even make it back to us.

“I’ve spoken to John and even though it puts us at a bit of a loss, we both feel that offering you a 10% refund without needing to return anything is the most fair and honest solution.

“We hope that feels reasonable to you given the situation, and if so just reply and we’ll take care of it straight away.

“Thank you again for your kindness and understanding, it really means a lot to us right now.”

After insisting on a return, she got back to me and said: “I had another talk with John, and even though things are a bit tight for us at the moment, we’d be willing to go the extra mile for you.

“We’d like to offer you a 20% refund, and the good news is that there’s no need to return the item. It’s not an easy call for us, as every bit counts at this stage, but we truly want to close this chapter the right way and leave you with a better feeling than this.”

After continuing the back and forth, they give me a ‘final offer’ of a 25% refund with no return needed, before giving me another ‘final offer’ of 35% and then 45% with ‘no return needed’.

When they did finally agree on the return and sent over the address, it was located in Ningbo in China – some 6,000 miles away from where they were claiming to trade from.

It was this address that I sent the jumper back to. The international shipping – that you have to pay for yourself – cost me almost as much as the jumper at just over £20.

After I sent the jumper off, I completely forgot about it. I received no shipping updates or emails about its progress. And crucially, I never got a refund for the jumper.

It was only last week when the package came back to my house – completely unopened and unchanged apart from a couple of return stickers slapped onto the front of it – did I realise that the so-called Harpers never refunded me or processed my return.

No doubt the people behind the scam think they’re covering their tracks when they say that ‘sometimes the returns don’t even make it back to us’, despite the item coming back to me with a sticker clearing stating that it has been ‘refused’.

When we did our initial investigation last year, we spoke with customers who had similar experiences with Harper Manchester and its returns system.

Ian, from Sale, told us of how he was served an advert of Harper Manchester on Facebook and ended up buying a pair of boots from their website which were nothing as described.

Advertised as real leather, Ian placed an order for brown boots on an enticing sale, from £200 to £49.95. But weeks later when they arrived, they looked nothing as described and were ‘like plastic’.

After deciding to return the item, he was offered all different types of refunds. After contacting the firm, the Manchester Evening News were shown a thread of emails between Ian and Harper Manchester.

False stories about Alice ‘chatting with John’ were conjured up, as attempts were repeatedly made to only offer him a partial refund of various amounts for him to keep the products and spend with them again.

Despite repeated reluctance to give the address to the Manchester store, one inaccurate email from the China-based firm read: “We’ve recently had to close our physical store and are now sending out the last of our remaining stock from our warehouse overseas, which has made things a bit trickier in terms of checking and matching every item perfectly.”

After receiving radio silence, Ian decided to file a chargeback request through his bank. The address to return them to was listed again in Zhejiang, and would have to be funded by Ian.

Since speaking with Ian last year, he has described the shop as ‘total nightmare’ that ‘wear most people down’. He managed to get a resolution by forcing a payment dispute with his card provider, who he says initially sided with Harper Manchester.

When he told them he’d be complaining and going to the financial ombudsman service, they raised a dispute. A Financial Ombudsman referral would have cost the card provider £750 regardless of the outcome, Ian says, which he believes helped him with his claim.

Shortly afterwards he received a refund back from the shop and the payment dispute and charge back to Harper Manchester was cancelled.

He says it took a massive amount of time to resolve and he never actually ended up returning the boots – instead his son wore them and they ‘fell apart within two weeks’.

When he last spoke to us he said: “I would describe myself as fairly savvy, and could kick myself for falling for this,” he said. “But it came up on Facebook, seemed realistic and like the store I had seen in Manchester, so could’ve believed it was from somewhere in that vicinity.

“This is a whole new issue. I had no idea this existed until I fell for it. I never thought AI could be used to scam people and essentially set up fake websites. I know its not a massive amount of money, but nobody ever likes being had.”

Shoppers are urged to not rely on reviews on the store websites and carry out thorough research elsewhere, be wary of unrealistically cheap deals, read product descriptions carefully and to keep all correspondence and documentation relating to purchases.

Jane Parsons, Consumer Expert at Citizens Advice, said: “Shopping should be simple and stress-free, but every year we hear from thousands of frustrated people who have a tough time trying to resolve issues with retailers and sellers.

“Consumers face all kinds of problems from receiving faulty items, to waiting weeks for deliveries and poor customer service. Plus, the ever-increasing use of AI makes it easier for scammers to trick people into buying items that look nothing like the images advertised.

“It’s important consumers know what steps to take before they part with their cash or after there’s an issue. It can make all the difference in avoiding a trap or getting a refund.”

As part of our investigation, the Manchester Evening News is returning the parcel again to Harper Manchester to see if the return and refund will be processed.