Extrathing.com is a deceptive website that offers to buy items at exceptionally cheap prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a ploy to make you think this site is legitimate. After ordering goods from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.
In this article, I will demonstrate the warning signs regarding the Extrathing.com site, the way this scam operates, and teach how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in upcoming times.
Extrathing.com Site – Scam Overview
As I said, Extrathing.com may initially look like a authentic discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a brief analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s deception. Unfair advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of user support and user testimonials – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.
| Website | Extrathing.com |
| Hosting | AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc. United States, San Francisco |
| IP Address | 104.18.3.157 |
| Threat Type | Scam/Fraud |
| Scam Type | Fraudulent/Scam online shop |
Extrathing.com Scam
By purchasing on sites like Extrathing.com, it is uncertain that you will obtain the goods you’ve ordered. More often, 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 imitation 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 pages that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.
Wrong item. To make the deal look real, but spend even less money on the delivered item, scammers may ship a random item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a scratched aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn rather inventive in that case.
Nothing at all. This is the most frequent case when ordering items from websites like Extrathing.com. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely vanish. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, frauds are not wasting time creating even a remote visibility of legitimacy.
Extrathing.com scam – How does it work?
As any fraud, Extrathing.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 marketing on online platforms, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say the same things as the websites do: 90% discounts, free delivery around the world, hurry up to get the deal.
Ads of fraudulent shops posted on different platforms
As users regard ads on the mentioned platforms benign, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become particularly compelling 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 users are on the website, scammers do their best to make the users buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discount promo codes, free delivery, bright and blinking “Order Now” buttons that are just everywhere – they use every single method possible. And this works out – uninformed customers stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.
Payments are done in a quirky 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 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 complaints 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 individuals know about the fraudulent activity, the profits will dry up, leaving crooks with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.
Why is Extrathing.com a Scam?
Well, we just talked about the way the fraud site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is deceptive without risking your money. Fortunately, scams 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 online reputation with reviews. Obviously, even legit shopping sites will lack user feedback shortly after the start, as there were not many buyers 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 blurred or nonsense 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% discounts are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, deceptive sites have the initial price low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be preposterous, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold at a low price, but every discount has its sane limits.
3. No customer support.
That factor distinguishes fraudulent websites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the buyers, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page (if it is present at all) – the site will have no contact info whatsoever.
Typically for fraudulent websites, the “About us” column is completely empty
When they offer a contact email, or even a phone to reach them out, there is a great chance that these emails and numbers will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your inquiry.
As frauds tend to reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a 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 plenty of benign services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. All of them though have the same feature 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 paid for the order, nothing will help you to get the money back.
Some websites may also ask for payments in crypto, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different frauds.
5. Items’ images are sourced from another page
As fraudsters most likely don’t have any goods, they cannot create unique pics. Thus their only option is simply to hijack these images from other sites. When crooks offer identical goods on different websites, you can find such images on similarly-looking scam 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
Frauds do not copy only photos. As rascals may use the same topic repeatedly, they put the same site design under the new URL, 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 copy of the original site. It allows you to uncover such scams pretty easy, but criminals who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.
Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design
Frequently Asked Questions about the Extrathing.com Scam
- Contact your bank or card provider and ask about chargeback options.
- Save screenshots, receipts, tracking numbers, and emails as evidence.
- Change reused passwords and enable two-factor authentication on important accounts.
- Watch for follow-up phishing emails pretending to offer refunds or delivery updates.
