Harrisonandclarke.com Scam Store: A Fake Harrison & Clarke Anniversary Website

Harrisonandclarke.com is a scam website that offers to buy shoes from Harrison & Clarke Anniversary at exceptionally cheap prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a story to make you think this site is legitimate. After ordering from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will highlight the warning signs regarding the Harrisonandclarke.com site, the way this deception operates, and teach how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in future.

Harrisonandclarke.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Harrisonandclarke.com may initially seem like a genuine discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Questionable advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, absence of user support and customer testimonials – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.

Harrisonandclarke.com Scam

By purchasing on websites like Harrisonandclarke.com, it is unlikely that you will acquire the items you’ve ordered. More commonly, it results in one of 3 scenarios characteristic 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 inform about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a specifically often case when ordering from websites that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

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

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

Harrisonandclarke.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Harrisonandclarke.com follows 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 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 genuine, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become especially 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 consumers are on the website, fraudsters do their best to make the users buy something. Mind-boggling 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 individuals 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, 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 deceivers, “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 vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals know about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving crooks with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Harrisonandclarke.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, 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

Scam websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any reputation with feedback. Obviously, even legit shopping sites will lack buyer opinions shortly after the start, as there were not many consumers 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, once you face phishy-looking reviews that have nothing to do with what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any indistinct or gibberish reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on deceptive 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 viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, deceptive sites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be absurd, 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 dishonest sites from the benign 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 (if it is present at all) – the site will likely have no contact info at all.

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

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

As scoundrels tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a different website, 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 plenty of legit services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. Each of the latter has 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 paid for the order, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some websites may also ask for payments in crypto, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While cryptocurrency transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different rascals.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As fraudsters most likely don’t have any goods on hand, they cannot make unique pics. Thus their only option is to steal these images from other websites. When scams sell identical goods on different pages, you can find same images on similarly-designed fraudulent 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

Scammers do not stop on stealing pics. As frauds may parasite on the same topic repeatedly, they put 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 identical copy of the original site. It allows you to unveil such frauds pretty easy, but crooks who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Harrisonandclarke.com Scam