Hallow-wear.com Exposed: Legit or Total Scam? Our Findings

Hallow-wear.com is a deceptive website that offers to purchase items at extremely low prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is in fact just a ploy 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, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will demonstrate the warning signs regarding the Hallow-wear.com store, the way this fraud operates, and show how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in upcoming times.

Hallow-wear.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Hallow-wear.com may initially seem like a genuine discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s deception. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of user support and customer reviews – this site accomplishes the fraud bingo right away.

By shopping on pages like Hallow-wear.com, it is questionable that you will obtain the items you’ve ordered. More often, it results in one of 3 scenarios common 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 notify about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a particularly frequent case when ordering from pages that offer baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the deal look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the actual item, scammers may send a accidental item they have instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a dented aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn really inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most usual scenario when ordering items from sites like Hallow-wear.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then just vanish. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, scams do not bother themselves with creating even a vague visibility of legitimacy.

Hallow-wear.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Hallow-wear.com runs a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It usually consists of 3 stages, with certain 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 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 benign, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become particularly 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 users are on the site, scammers do their best to make the consumers 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 quirky 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 scammers, “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 grievances and user feedback regarding the site being fraudulent, they just disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people are aware about the deceptive activity, the profits will dry up, leaving crooks with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Hallow-wear.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 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

Hoax sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack consumer comments when they have just started, as there were not many patrons 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 nothing to do with what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any unclear or drivel reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on fraudulent sites 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% markdowns are not trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, scam 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 for cheap, but every discount has its logical limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes fraudulent websites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the buyers, there’s no need to bother about answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the page will likely have no support contacts at all.

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 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 frauds often reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a totally different website, be sure you are facing 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 not a guarantee, as there are a whole lot of genuine shops and services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. All of them though have the same feature I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what makes it so attractive to scammers – once you’ve sent the money, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some sites 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 scammers.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scams most likely don’t have any goods on hand, they are not able to make unique pics. Thus their only option is to hijack these images from other websites. When scammers sell the same goods on different sites, you can find such pics on similarly-looking fraudulent sites. By reverse image searching 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 pictures. As rascals may use the same topic repeatedly, they use the same site design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search on Google advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the copy of the original site. It allows you to unveil such scams particularly easy, but scoundrels who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Hallow-wear.com Scam