Morestimes.com Scam Store: What You Need To Know

Morestimes.com is a fraudulent website that offers to buy decorations at exceptionally cheap prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a narrative to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon ordering from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will highlight the red flags regarding the Morestimes.com store, the way this scam operates, and explain how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in upcoming times.

Morestimes.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Morestimes.com may initially appear like a genuine discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a brief analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s deception. Questionable advertising methods, extremely low prices, lack of customer support and user feedback – this site fulfills the scam bingo right away.

Morestimes.com Scam

By purchasing on sites like Morestimes.com, it is improbable that you will receive the goods you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 cases 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 mention 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 sites that sell baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

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

Absolutely nothing. This is the most common situation when ordering goods from websites like Morestimes.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, scammers are not wasting time creating even a faint semblance of legitimacy.

Morestimes.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Morestimes.com follows a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post abundant amounts of marketing on online platforms, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say exactly 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 benign, they do not doubt 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 users are on the website, scammers do their best to make the users buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discounts, free delivery, 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 quirky manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, fraudsters 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 crooks get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user feedback regarding the site being fraudulent, they simply disappear. 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 crooks with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Morestimes.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 deceptive 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 reason (and way) to make any reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack buyer opinions when they have just started, as there were just a few customers 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, when you face unrealistic reviews that have no relation to what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any indistinct or nonsense reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on scam 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% reductions are not trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, dishonest 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 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 scam 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 have no contact info whatsoever.

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

When they offer a contact 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 scammers often reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a different website, be sure that this is 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 a lot of legit shops and 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 makes it so attractive to scammers – once you’ve sent the money, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some websites may also offer payments in crypto, which feature even less control. While cryptocurrency transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different fraudsters.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As fraudsters most likely don’t have any goods, they are not able to create unique images. Thus their option is simply to hijack these images elsewhere. When fraudsters offer identical items on different pages, you can find same images on similarly-looking scam sites. 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 frauds may use the same topic repeatedly, they use the same web design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search on Google advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the page you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such frauds particularly easy, but scammers who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Morestimes.com Scam