Homefurnishingstyle.com Scam Store: A Fake Wayfair Website

Homefurnishingstyle.com is a fraudulent website that offers to buy items from Wayfair at unusually discounted prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is in fact just a narrative to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon ordering from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will show the warning signs regarding the Homefurnishingstyle.com store, the way this fraud operates, and explain how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in future.

Homefurnishingstyle.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Homefurnishingstyle.com may initially seem like a legit discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s deception. Questionable advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, absence of customer support and customer feedback – this site fulfills the scam bingo right away.

Homefurnishingstyle.com Scam

By purchasing items on websites like Homefurnishingstyle.com, it is doubtful that you will acquire the goods you’ve ordered. More commonly, it results in one of 3 situations characteristic for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to fraudulent items of popular brands, the standard will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may mention about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a notably common case when ordering from sites that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the purchase look real, but spend even less money on the delivered item, frauds may ship a random item they have instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a new one, a dirty aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn quite inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most common outcome when ordering from sites like Homefurnishingstyle.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, rascals do not bother themselves with creating even a vague sight of legitimacy.

Homefurnishingstyle.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Homefurnishingstyle.com runs a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It usually 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 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms genuine, they do not suspect 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 mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once individuals are on the website, tricksters do their best to make the customers buy something. Mind-boggling 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 users 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 swindlers get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user feedback regarding the site being fraudulent, they just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers know about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving swindlers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Homefurnishingstyle.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 fraudulent 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

Hoax sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any online reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack client testimonials 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, when you face unrealistic reviews that have no relation to what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any unclear or absurdity reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on dishonest 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% discounts are not feasible 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 outrageous, 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.

This is what distinguishes scam websites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the customers, there’s no need to bother about answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the page will have no contact info at all.

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

When they offer an email, or even a phone to reach them out, there is a huge possibility that these contacts will be dead silent to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.

As scammers often reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned 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 not a guarantee, as there are plenty of trustworthy services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. All of them though have the same pitfall 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, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some websites may also offer payments in cryptocurrency, 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 scammers are unlikely to have any real items on hand, they cannot make unique pics. Thus their option is simply to steal these images elsewhere. When frauds offer identical items on different sites, you can find same pics on similarly-designed scam pages. 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 pictures. As scammers may use the same topic again and again, they reuse the same web design under the new address, and voila – a new scam site 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 original site. It allows you to uncover such frauds pretty easy, but criminals who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Homefurnishingstyle.com Scam