Fashionwiseshop.com Fact Check: Legitimate or Shady Scam?

Fashionwiseshop.com is a scam website that offers to purchase various goods at exceptionally cheap prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is in fact just a narrative to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. After 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 show the warning signs regarding the Fashionwiseshop.com site, the way this scam operates, and teach how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in future.

Fashionwiseshop.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Fashionwiseshop.com may initially look like a legit discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Unfair advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, lack of customer support and customer feedback – this site accomplishes the fraud bingo right away.

Fashionwiseshop.com Scam

By purchasing on websites like Fashionwiseshop.com, it is questionable that you will acquire the items you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 cases 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 characteristic 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 particularly often case when ordering from websites that sell baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

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

Nothing at all. This is the most frequent case when ordering goods from pages like Fashionwiseshop.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scam websites do not aim to exist for a long time, frauds do not bother themselves with creating even a remote semblance of legitimacy.

Fashionwiseshop.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Fashionwiseshop.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. Frauds post huge amounts of promotions 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms benign, they do not doubt 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 consumers are on the website, scammers do their best to make the individuals buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discounts, free delivery, 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 curious manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, tricksters 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 tricksters get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user feedback regarding the site being fraudulent, they simply vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals are aware about the dishonest activity, the profits will dry up, leaving scammers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Fashionwiseshop.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 fraudulent 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

Hoax sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any reputation with feedback. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack buyer opinions when they have just started, since there were just a few 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 nothing to do with what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or drivel reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on fraudulent 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 feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, fraudulent sites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be ridiculous, 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 reasonable limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes fraudulent websites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the customers, 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 page will likely have no contact info at all.

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

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

As frauds often reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a different site, be sure you are facing a blatant scam.

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

4. Payments via payment systems that does not support refunds

This scam indicator is not a guarantee, as there are a whole lot of genuine shops and services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. Each of the latter has the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. 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 sites may also ask for payments in cryptocurrency, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different rascals.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scams are unlikely to have any items, they cannot make unique images. Thus their only option is simply to hijack these images from other sites. When scammers sell identical goods on different pages, you can find such pics on similarly-looking 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

Rascals do not stop on stealing pics. As frauds may parasite on the same topic again and again, they reuse the same site design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search on Google advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such scams particularly easy, but scoundrels who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Fashionwiseshop.com Scam