Smithwardrobe.uk is a deceptive website that offers to purchase women clothing at unusually discounted prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a ploy 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 demonstrate the concerning indicators regarding the Smithwardrobe.uk shop, the way this scam operates, and show how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in future.
Smithwardrobe.uk Site – Scam Overview
As I said, Smithwardrobe.uk may initially appear like a legit discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Unfair advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of customer support and user feedback – this site accomplishes the scam bingo right away.
| Website | Smithwardrobe.uk |
| Hosting | AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc. Canada, Ottawa |
| IP Address | 23.227.38.65 |
| Threat Type | Scam/Fraud |
| Scam Type | Fraudulent/Scam online shop |
Smithwardrobe.uk Scam
By purchasing on websites like Smithwardrobe.uk, it is doubtful that you will receive the items you’ve ordered. More commonly, 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 counterfeit items of popular brands, the attribute will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may indicate about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a especially often case when ordering from sites that offer baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.
Wrong item. To make the purchase look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the actual item, scammers may ship a random item they have instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a scratched aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn rather inventive in that case.
Nothing at all. This is the most frequent situation when ordering goods from websites like Smithwardrobe.uk. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scam websites are not going to exist for a long time, scammers do not bother themselves with creating even a faint sight of legitimacy.
Smithwardrobe.uk scam – How does it work?
As any scam, Smithwardrobe.uk follows a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It usually consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.
Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post huge amounts of promotions on social media, 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 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 mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.
Step 2 – Take the Money. Once customers are on the website, scammers do their best to make the consumers buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discount promo codes, 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 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 scammers, “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 feedback regarding 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 dishonest activity, the profits 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 Smithwardrobe.uk 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, 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 websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with reviews. Obviously, even legit shopping sites will lack client testimonials shortly after the start, since there were only a few customers 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 no relation to what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or gibberish reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on dishonest 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% reductions are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, deceptive 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 for cheap, but every discount has its sensible limits.
3. No customer support.
This is what distinguishes dishonest sites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the customers, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the site will 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 number to reach them out, there is a huge 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 frauds 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 totally different site, be sure you’re 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 complementary, as there are plenty of trustworthy services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. Each of the latter has the same feature I’ve already mentioned above: these methods do not suppose any refund options. And this is what attracts scammers – once you paid for the order, nothing will help you to get the money back.
Some sites may also offer payments in crypto, which feature even less control. While crypto payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different fraudsters.
5. Items’ images are sourced from another page
As scammers most likely don’t have any goods on hand, they cannot create unique pics. Thus their only option is simply to steal these images from other sites. When fraudsters market the same goods on different sites, you can find such pics on similarly-looking scam pages. 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
This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As frauds may use the same topic repeatedly, they use the same site design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search on Google advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the copy of the site you’ve started on. It allows you to unveil such scams particularly easy, but scammers who create them never aim at cautious users.
Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design
