Wayofwade.at is a scam website that offers to purchase items at unusually discounted 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. After ordering goods from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.
In this article, I will highlight the concerning indicators regarding the Wayofwade.at site, the way this deception operates, and teach how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.
Wayofwade.at Site – Scam Overview
As I said, Wayofwade.at may initially look like a legit discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of user support and user reviews – this site completes the scam bingo right away.
| Website | Wayofwade.at |
| Hosting | AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc. United States, San Francisco |
| IP Address | 172.67.180.148 |
| Threat Type | Scam/Fraud |
| Scam Type | Fraudulent/Scam online shop |
Wayofwade.at Scam
By shopping on websites like Wayofwade.at, it is uncertain that you will acquire the items you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 instances typical 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 characteristic 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 frequent case when ordering from pages that sell baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.
Wrong item. To make the transaction look real, but spend even less money on the delivered item, rascals may ship a incidental item they have on hand instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a branded one, a scratched aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn quite inventive in that case.
Absolutely nothing. This is the most usual outcome when ordering items from websites like Wayofwade.at. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely disappear. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, frauds do not bother themselves with creating even a remote semblance of legitimacy.
Wayofwade.at scam – How does it work?
As any fraud, Wayofwade.at 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 huge 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 regard ads on the mentioned platforms benign, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become especially 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, fraudsters do their best to make the consumers 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, swindlers 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 swindlers get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user reports 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 are aware about the dishonest activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving fraudsters with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.
Why is Wayofwade.at a Scam?
Well, we just talked about the way the scam site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is fraudulent without risking your money. Fortunately, frauds 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 sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack consumer comments shortly after the start, since there were only a few buyers 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 unrealistic reviews that have nothing to do with what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any unclear or nonsense 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% markdowns are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, deceptive websites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be preposterous, 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 sane limits.
3. No customer support.
That factor distinguishes dishonest websites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to rip off 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 most likely have no contact info at all.
Typically for fraudulent sites, the “About us” column is completely empty
When they offer an email, or even a phone number to contact them, there is a great chance that these contacts will be dead silent to your request. This, or you will receive some 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 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 whole lot of legit shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. All of them though have the same feature I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what attracts scammers – once you’ve sent the money, there’s no way to get the money back.
Some sites may also ask for payments in crypto, which feature even less control. While cryptocurrency transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different frauds.
5. Items’ images are sourced from another page
As rascals are unlikely to have any items, they cannot shoot unique images. Thus their only option is to steal these images elsewhere. When scammers sell identical items on different pages, you can find same pics on similarly-designed scam sites. 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 scammers may parasite on the same topic repeatedly, they reuse the same site design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the copy of the site you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such frauds particularly easy, but scoundrels who create them never aim at cautious users.
Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design
