Kind Capitalism & How Lil Helper Got Scammed

ICYMI on our TikTok, one of the most loveable things about Lil Helper is how much our CEO Mohammed cares. We believe in kind capitalism. What does that mean? That means supporting low income families with our Baby Do Better program, showing we care with our God Forbid Guarantee, and trusting our customers and treating them like family. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always work out and as a baby product company, Lil Helper has on occasion been victim to a cloth diaper scam.

Take a look at this video to see what happened and how Mohammed reacted.

If you're running low on data or can't watch the video, this is basically what happened: A woman ordered a bunch of our diapers. She carefully removed the packaging from the Lil Helper diapers. Then she folded up a bunch of old diapers that weren’t made by us and carefully repackaged them with our packaging. She then sent these diapers back to us for a refund. We had already processed the refund before we received her package.

Since sharing this video, we’ve learned that this is a common scam that desperate parents pull with baby related products. They get away with it because they’re usually dealing with big box stores who don’t take the time to really look at what's being returned. As Mohammed mentions in the video, we are a small business and returns come into his home.

We are not going to change the way we conduct business. This has just opened our eyes to the seedy world of baby related product scams. All we ask of you is that if you see people planning scams like this, remind them that there are real people behind those companies. That they also have families to feed and mortgages to pay.

And this is not the only time we’ve experienced something like this.

Was lil helper scammed again? Or is this a mistake on the customers part?

We think this was a mistake on the customer's part, but what do you think?

Here's what happened:

Around Christmas time 2016, a customer contacted us requesting to return 2 Lil Helper day packs. We agreed to accept the return, refunded their money and asked the customer to send the product back to us. Some of you will be reading this saying "WHAT?! You gave them their money back BEFORE you got the product returned? AGAIN!?" Well, yes, dear reader. In our experience, everyone who requests a return will send us the product back. If we are being honest, at the risk of sounding braggy, we don't get that many returns. However, customers always send the product back. In this case, we received a package from this customer... containing 2 brand new stroller blankets. Not the $300 worth of Lil Helper diapers we were expecting.

So... was Lil Helper scammed?

Naaaah.... at least, we hope not! We are choosing to believe that this was a mistake on the customers part. Maybe they were returning these stroller blankets to another retailer and got the shipping labels mixed up. Who knows. It doesn't matter, anyways. What do you do when life gives you lemons? Thank them because lemons are really expensive when they're out of season. Or... you could make lemonade.

So we chose to host The Kindness Giveaway! We asked our customers to tell us about a time they showed someone kindness or when someone showed them kindness. Inspire us. Don't, for the love of Beyoncé, be humble. This is a chance to brag a bit. The contest is now closed, but we were thrilled to ‘pay it forward’ and pass on this weird mistake to our loyal customers.

We believe if more companies focused on kind capitalism, the world would be a better place.