We Looked Into Briefterrific.com: Scam or Legit? The Verdict

Briefterrific.com is a scam website that offers to purchase items at unusually discounted prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is actually just a story to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon ordering from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will demonstrate the red flags regarding the Briefterrific.com site, the way this scam operates, and explain how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in future.

Briefterrific.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Briefterrific.com may initially look like a genuine discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s deception. Unfair advertising methods, extremely low prices, absence of user support and customer testimonials – this site fulfills the scam bingo right away.

Briefterrific.com Scam

By purchasing items on sites like Briefterrific.com, it is improbable that you will receive the goods you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 instances typical for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to counterfeit items of popular brands, the quality will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may notify 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 sites that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the purchase look real, but spend even less money on the actual item, scammers may send a incidental item they have on hand instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a new one, a dirty aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn quite inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most frequent situation when ordering goods from sites like Briefterrific.com. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scam websites are not going to exist for a long time, frauds do not bother themselves with creating even a slight visibility of legitimacy.

Briefterrific.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Briefterrific.com runs a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post huge amounts of advertisements on social media, 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms benevolent, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become especially convincing during major events that boost people’s interest in shopping, like Halloween, Black Friday, Christmas, etc. Sometimes, they mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once individuals are on the site, deceivers do their best to make the individuals buy something. Impossibly good deals, additional discount promo codes, free shipping, bright and blinking “Order Now” buttons that are just everywhere – they use every single method possible. And this works out – uninformed consumers stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a strange manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, swindlers 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 tricksters, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.

Step 3 – Vanish. Once swindlers get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user feedback about the site being fraudulent, they simply disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers are aware about the deceptive activity, the profits will dry up, leaving scammers with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Briefterrific.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the hoax site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is untrustworthy without risking your money. Fortunately, scammers 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 purpose (and way) to make any 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 requires confirmation by other signs or indicators.

Definitely not generic comments generated by AI

However, once you face phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site sells, 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 sites you will get an entire saltcellar. Do not hesitate searching 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% markdowns are not trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, fraudulent websites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be outrageous, 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 scam websites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the clients, there’s no need to bother about answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the site will likely have no support contacts at all.

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

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

As scoundrels often reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a completely different website, 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 lot of trustworthy services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. Each of the latter has the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: these methods do not suppose any refund options. And this is what makes it so attractive to scammers – once you’ve sent the money, nothing will help you to get the money back.

Some sites may also offer payments in cryptocurrency, which feature even less control. While crypto transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different fraudsters.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scams most likely don’t have any goods, they are not able to make unique pictures. Thus their option is simply to steal these images from other sites. When crooks market identical goods on different pages, you can find same images on similarly-designed scam sites. By searching for the image on Google, you can prove whether the image is unique or not.

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

6. Design repeats the one of a different page

This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As scammers may scam people on the same topic repeatedly, they use the same site design under the new address, and voila – a new scam site 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 allows you to uncover such frauds pretty easy, but criminals who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Briefterrific.com Scam