Awishstore.shop Review: Is It A Scam Or Legit?

Awishstore.shop is a fraudulent website that offers to buy items at unusually discounted prices. It may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is in fact just a story to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon placing an order on this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will highlight the warning signs regarding the Awishstore.shop store, the way this deception operates, and show how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.

Awishstore.shop Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Awishstore.shop may initially look like a authentic discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Questionable advertising methods, extremely low prices, lack of user support and user reviews – this site accomplishes the scam bingo right away.

Awishstore.shop Scam

By purchasing items on sites like Awishstore.shop, it is improbable that you will acquire the goods you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 scenarios standard for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to fake items of popular brands, the quality will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may inform about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a especially common case when ordering from websites that offer baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the trade look legit, but spend even less money on the actual item, rascals may ship a incidental item they have on hand instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a dented aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn rather inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most common situation when ordering goods from sites like Awishstore.shop. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely vanish. As scam websites are not going to exist for a long time, scammers are not wasting effort creating even a remote semblance of legitimacy.

Awishstore.shop scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Awishstore.shop runs a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post abundant amounts of advertisements on online platforms, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say the same things as their sites do: 90% discounts, free delivery around the world, hurry up to get the deal.

Ads of fraudulent shops posted on different platforms

As users consider ads on the mentioned platforms legitimate, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become especially persuasive during major events that boost people’s interest in shopping, like Halloween, Black Friday, Christmas, etc. Sometimes, they disguise themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once customers are on the website, swindlers do their best to make the consumers buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discounts, free shipping, bright and blinking “Order Now” buttons that are just everywhere – they use every single method possible. And this works out – uninformed individuals stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a unusual manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, scammers offer using direct bank transfers, Venmo or CashApp. Thing is, the latter do not provide any refunds, regardless of the circumstances. Even when you can prove that the transaction went to fraudsters, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.

Step 3 – Vanish. Once scoundrels get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user reports about the site being a scam, they just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people know about the dishonest activity, the profits will dry up, leaving scammers with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Awishstore.shop a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the scam site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is untrustworthy without risking your money. Fortunately, fraudsters do not bother themselves with creating well-rounded disguises, so the same red flags repeat from one site to another.

1. Fake or absent reviews

Scam websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any online reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack customer reviews when they have just started, since there were not many consumers yet. For that reason, this sign is not stand-alone and must be confirmed with other signs or indicators.

Definitely not generic comments generated by AI

However, when you face phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any indistinct or gibberish reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on dishonest websites you will get an entire saltcellar. Always search for reviews on Google – this may save your money.

2. Unbelievably high discounts/low prices

No merchants will sell goods at loss for themselves. 70%, 80%, 90% reductions are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, deceptive sites have the initial price low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be ludicrous, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold at a low price, but every sell-off has its sane limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes dishonest websites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the buyers, there’s no need to bother about answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the site will have no support contacts at all.

Typically for fraudulent sites, the “About us” column is completely empty

When they offer an email, or even a phone number to contact them, there is a great possibility that these numbers and emails will be dead silent to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

As scoundrels often reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a completely different site, be sure that this is a blatant scam.

A chain of scam websites that use the same “support email”

4. Payments via payment systems that does not support refunds

This scam indicator is complementary, as there are a whole lot of benign services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. All of them though have the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what attracts scammers – once you paid for the order, nothing will help you to get the money back.

Some websites may also ask for payments in crypto, which feature even less control. While cryptocurrency payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different rascals.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As fraudsters most likely don’t have any items on hand, they cannot shoot unique images. Thus their only option is to steal these images from other sites. When rascals sell identical goods on different pages, you can find same pics on similarly-designed fraudulent pages. By searching for the image on Google, you can prove the uniqueness of an image.

Image duplicates on another scam site, as well as on Amazon and Walmart sites

6. Design repeats the one of a different page

Scammers do not stop on stealing photos. As rascals may use the same topic again and again, they reuse the same web design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the site you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such frauds particularly easy, but crooks who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Awishstore.shop Scam