From our Bureau of Latrine American National Heroes with some assistance from our Bureau of Questionable Socialist Business Practices
Should anyone be surprised by this piece of news? Could socialist businesses run by Cubans in Toronto, Canada be offering poor service or scamming their customers? Could such a thing happen when a national hero is involved, especially a hero who is now in charge of all the internal watchdogs and snitches of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution?
Could the rash of complaints about this online store on social media have anything to do with the fact that all the reviews on their Facebook page have vanished and their website is now “closed for maintenance” and unreachable?
Hard to decide whether one should laugh or weep.
Abridged and loosely translated from Diario de Cuba
Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, the Cuban spy imprisoned in the US for 16 years and current national coordinator of the surveillance and denunciation organization Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), invited on his Twitter profile to shop at one of the online stores where the island’s regime offers products that are difficult to find in the physical markets of the country, but that can only be paid for from abroad.
“Tiendalotengo.com, an option for those who help their relatives from abroad,” published the official official, accompanying his call with a promotional video of the business.
The virtual store, belonging to the state-owned Import-Export Trading Company of the Light Industry (ENCOMIL) of Cuba, is nevertheless domiciled in an office building located at 10 Four Seasons Place, Suite 1000, Toronto, in Canada.
According to its website, it offers everything from beauty and personal hygiene items to household tools, clothing, and footwear, including detergents, floor blankets, mattresses, home furnishings, paint, and even some canned food, most of which is domestically produced. Likewise, it offers products for artisans and private producers, such as leather for saddlery.
Tiendalotengo makes deliveries throughout the country, although purchases can only be made from abroad from Monday to Friday and paying with Visa and MasterCard cards. Products are denominated in Canadian dollars.
However, since it began its operations in 2020, the store has received a multitude of bad reviews on its Facebook profile due to irregularities in deliveries and customer service.
While Lis Estrada assures that it is the store in Cuba “with the best prices” and that she was “delighted with the love and excellent attention they gave me,” Day Lobaina Díaz pointed out: “I do not recommend this page due to the delay in deliveries and the bad customer service. Although I have bought many times there, the service is getting worse.”
Much worse is the evaluation of Mailyn Pérez Barban: “For me they are lousy and scammers. They made some purchases for me and what they did was scam my uncles’ money. They charged them, but they never sent them the email with the order number what they bought. They are not trustworthy, don’t be fooled.”
Odaisy Portal is more specific in this regard: “At first everything was fine. In the end they cheated me of 478.78 dollars. The merchandise never reached my mother in Cuba! They were beds and mattresses. I already went to Cuba and came back and the beds were for my children and they never arrived. More than two months and I complain to the bank and they say that they do not answer. They are scammers!”
The SOB in question is not just one of the “Cuban Five” but the star spy, the one who was the mastermind behind the murder of the four Brothers to the Rescue pilots in 1996 and got a life sentence for that–until Obama saw fit to free him as part of his unilateral concessions to get his precious “normalization.” He’s also the one for whom Senator Patrick Leahy, to his eternal disgrace, acted as sperm procurer.
But, the “diaspora” knows no bounds when it comes to procuring stuff for relatives in Cuba, though it knows perfectly well it’s being exploited even when the stuff materializes. Naturally, the regime knows it’s dealing with cooperative suckers, so it’s hardly surprising that it would try to milk them for all they’re worth.