Symtmetry.com Review: A Fake Store You Should Avoid

Symtmetry.com is a deceptive website that offers to buy christmas items at extremely low prices. It may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is in fact just a story to make you think this site is legitimate. After placing an order on 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 Symtmetry.com store, the way this scam operates, and teach how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.

Symtmetry.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Symtmetry.com may initially seem like a legit discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a brief analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Unfair advertising methods, extremely low prices, absence of customer support and customer feedback – this site fulfills the scam bingo right away.

Symtmetry.com Scam

By shopping on pages like Symtmetry.com, it is uncertain that you will obtain the items you’ve ordered. More often, it results in one of 3 instances characteristic 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 grade 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 common case when ordering from pages that offer baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the transaction look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the actual item, rascals may send a random item they have on hand instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a new one, a dirty aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn really inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most frequent situation when ordering from sites like Symtmetry.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply disappear. As scam sites do not aim to exist for a long time, fraudsters are not wasting effort creating even a vague sight of legitimacy.

Symtmetry.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Symtmetry.com runs a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post massive amounts of marketing on social media, 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 consider ads on the mentioned platforms benign, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become particularly compelling 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 consumers are on the site, deceivers do their best to make the customers 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 curious 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 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 reports about the site being fraudulent, they simply disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers are aware about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving scammers with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Symtmetry.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, rascals 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

Fraud websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any reputation with reviews. Obviously, even legit shopping sites will lack client testimonials shortly after the start, as there were not many 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 balderdash 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. 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 feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, dishonest websites 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 dishonest sites from the genuine 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 sites, 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 chance that these contacts will be dead silent to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your inquiry.

As frauds tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a completely 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 complementary, as there are a whole lot of trustworthy shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. All of them though have the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what makes it so attractive to scammers – once you’ve sent the money, nothing will help you to get the money back.

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

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scammers are unlikely to have any items on hand, they are not able to create unique pictures. Thus their option is to hijack these images from other sites. When fraudsters market identical goods on different pages, you can find such pics on similarly-designed fraudulent sites. By reverse image searching 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 photos. As scammers may use the same topic again and again, they reuse the same site design under the new web-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 page you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such scams particularly easy, but criminals who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Symtmetry.com Scam