Is Thriftycraze.com Legit or a Ripoff? Our In-Depth Investigation

Thriftycraze.com is a fraudulent website that offers to buy 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 ploy to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon placing an order on this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will highlight the red flags regarding the Thriftycraze.com site, the way this scam operates, and show how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in future.

Thriftycraze.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Thriftycraze.com may initially appear like a legit discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a disturbing 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 fulfills the fraud bingo right away.

Thriftycraze.com Scam

By purchasing items on sites like Thriftycraze.com, it is uncertain that you will acquire the items you’ve ordered. More commonly, it results in one of 3 scenarios standard for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to fake items of popular brands, the grade 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 particularly frequent case when ordering from pages that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the trade look legit, but spend even less money on the actual item, cheats may ship a random item they have on hand instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a brand 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 case when ordering from websites like Thriftycraze.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely vanish. As scam sites do not aim to exist for a long time, scams do not bother themselves with creating even a vague semblance of legitimacy.

Thriftycraze.com scam – How does it work?

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

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post massive 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 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 users are on the site, tricksters do their best to make the users 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 individuals 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, 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 fraudsters, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.

Step 3 – Vanish. Once scoundrels get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances 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 people know about the dishonest activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving cheats with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Thriftycraze.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 untrustworthy 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 purpose (and way) to make any reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack client testimonials shortly after the start, as there were only a few 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, once you face unrealistic reviews that have nothing to do with what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or drivel reviews that may describe any item sold on the website 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, scam sites have the initial price low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be ludicrous, 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 reasonable limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes fraudulent websites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the clients, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the site will have no support contacts whatsoever.

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

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

As frauds often reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a different website, be sure you are 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 not a guarantee, as there are a lot of trustworthy services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. 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 paid for the order, there’s no way to get the money back.

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

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As fraudsters most likely don’t have any goods on hand, they cannot make unique pics. Thus their option is simply to hijack these images elsewhere. When crooks market the same goods on different pages, you can find such pics on similarly-looking fraudulent pages. 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

This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As frauds may parasite on the same topic again and again, they use the same web design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the copy of the original site. It allows you to uncover such scams pretty easy, but scoundrels who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Thriftycraze.com Scam