Fionacharm.com Review: Avoid Scam Website at All Costs

Fionacharm.com is a fraudulent website that offers to buy items at extremely low 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 about this site as a legitimate one. Upon ordering goods 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 warning signs regarding the Fionacharm.com shop, the way this deception operates, and teach how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in future.

Fionacharm.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Fionacharm.com may initially appear like a authentic discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s deception. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, absence of user support and user reviews – this site accomplishes the fraud bingo right away.

Fionacharm.com Scam

By shopping on pages like Fionacharm.com, it is uncertain that you will obtain the goods you’ve ordered. More often, it results in one of 3 situations typical 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 characteristic will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may indicate about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a specifically frequent case when ordering from websites that offer baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the deal look real, but spend even less money on the actual item, scammers may send a accidental item they have instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a branded one, a scratched aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn rather inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most usual scenario when ordering items from pages like Fionacharm.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scam sites are not going to exist for a long time, scams do not bother themselves with creating even a faint sight of legitimacy.

Fionacharm.com scam – How does it work?

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

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post huge amounts of marketing on social media, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say exactly 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 regard ads on the mentioned platforms benevolent, they do not doubt 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 site, tricksters do their best to make the customers buy something. Impossibly good 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 customers stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

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

Step 3 – Vanish. Once rascals get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user feedback about the site being fraudulent, they just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people are aware about the dishonest activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving cheats with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Fionacharm.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the scam site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is deceptive without risking your money. Fortunately, frauds 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 websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with feedback. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack user feedback shortly after the start, as there were not many clients 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 offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any blurred or drivel reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on deceptive websites 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% reductions are not trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, scam 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 discount has its reasonable limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes dishonest sites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to rip off the customers, there’s no need to bother about answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page (if it is present at all) – the site will likely have no support contacts at all.

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

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

As scoundrels often reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a totally 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 lot of benign services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. 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’ve sent the money, nothing will help you to get the money back.

Some websites may also ask for payments in crypto, which feature even less control. 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 scams most likely don’t have any real items on hand, they are not able to create unique images. Thus their only option is simply to steal these images from other websites. When rascals sell identical items on different websites, you can find such images on similarly-looking scam sites. By reverse image searching 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

This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As frauds may scam people on the same topic again and again, they use the same site design under the new address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search on Google advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the copy of the page you’ve started on. It allows you to uncover such frauds pretty easy, but scoundrels who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are cases when Fionacharm.com site, together with similar scam pages, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are two particular malware types that aim specifically at such purposes. If you see excessive amounts of ads appearing in your browser, see your search inquiries going in a different search engine and some random pages open time to time, scan your device with GridinSoft Anti-Malware. This will help you to get rid of annoying promotions and scam sites.

Remove malware with Gridinsoft Anti-Malware

We have also been using this software on our systems ever since, and it has always been successful in detecting viruses. It has blocked the most common adware as shown from our tests with the software, and we assure you that it can remove malware as well as other malware hiding on your computer.

To use Gridinsoft for remove malicious threats, follow the steps below:

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Frequently Asked Questions about the Fionacharm.com Scam