Hotishoe.com Review: A Fake Store You Should Avoid

Hotishoe.com is a deceptive website that offers to purchase home decorations at exceptionally cheap prices. It 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 this site is legitimate. After ordering goods from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will demonstrate the warning signs regarding the Hotishoe.com shop, the way this deception operates, and show how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in upcoming times.

Hotishoe.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Hotishoe.com may initially look like a genuine discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a brief analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Unfair advertising methods, extremely low prices, lack of customer support and customer feedback – this site completes the fraud bingo right away.

Hotishoe.com Scam

By purchasing items on websites like Hotishoe.com, it is unlikely that you will receive the items 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 inform 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 promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the transaction look real, but spend even less money on the actual item, frauds may send a accidental item they have on hand instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a branded one, a dented aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn really inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most typical situation when ordering from websites like Hotishoe.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, scams do not bother themselves with creating even a remote semblance of legitimacy.

Hotishoe.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Hotishoe.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 abundant amounts of promotions on social media, 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 regard ads on the mentioned platforms legitimate, they do not suspect 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 customers are on the site, tricksters do their best to make the users 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 users 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, 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 tricksters get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user reports regarding the site being a scam, they just disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals know about the deceptive activity, the profits will dry up, leaving scammers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Hotishoe.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, 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 websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any online reputation with feedback. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack buyer opinions when they have just started, as there were just a few clients 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 blurred or balderdash 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% discounts are not trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, scam websites have the initial price 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 scam 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 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 contact them, there is a great chance that these contacts will be unresponsive 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 appear on a different site, be sure you’re 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 complementary, as there are a lot of genuine 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: these methods do not suppose any refund options. And this is what attracts scammers – once you’ve sent the money, nothing will help you to get the money back.

Some sites may also offer 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 scams most likely don’t have any items, they are not able to create unique images. Thus their only option is simply to steal these images elsewhere. When fraudsters market the same items on different pages, you can find same pics on similarly-looking 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

This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As rascals may use the same topic repeatedly, they reuse the same site design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such frauds particularly easy, but criminals who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are situations when Hotishoe.com website, together with similar scam sites, 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 into an unusual search engine and some random pages open time to time, consider scanning your PC 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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3.Follow the installation setup wizard's instructions diligently.

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Be patient, as the scan duration depends on the number of files and your computer's hardware capabilities. Use this time to relax or attend to other tasks.

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Frequently Asked Questions about the Hotishoe.com Scam