eCommerce Website Scam Proofs — fancy.com
I would never guess i would be Scammed This Way. I was selling iPhone Cases and trying to validate my new business.
I read many articles and i downloaded all the popular and seemly legit apps for selling. I ended up downloading Fancy which was recommended by an article and based on play-store downloaded and reviews number.
www.fancy.com
Fancy is a website with seemly 5 Million downloads in app store and positive reviews.
Nothing wrong right?
I downloaded the app, and there was no way to sell inside the app, so i put it aside for later.
The next day i opened the website version, and tried to set up my account for selling.
Wikipedia looks fine, started in 2009 (Alive for 10 years), 73 Million dollars in total raised, partnerships with google+. The founder is married and has kids.
I searched fancy selling and they appeared on the first line. www.fancy.com it’s a very rare and expensive domain.
This is how the seller page looks like. The advertising, the design, the legal things, everything has big potential to be a striving, big and long business.
What Went Wrong?
It was midnight, i signed up for their website. It was told to me in one of the following pages that i would be charged 20% for each item i would sell. Fair enough! I am just starting my business anyways.
I put all my visa card data, in which i would receive the money from, right?
Hell No, At the same time i pressed the button “submit”, i scrolled up and my eyes glanced at the small grey text which says, $300.
I had already pressed the button. My heart starts beating, Was it really $300 a month? or just my imagination.
I created a new account to check that out. I couldn't afford to pay $300!!! The small text said:
$300 / month, opt-out available after 30 days. Auto-renews for 12 months or until opt-out is exercised.
Holy ****. The next thoughts are: I have to look at the billing page and make sure.
I did and There was no way to cancel the membership in the page, there was not way to take off my credit card info and there was no way to disable auto-renew. I pressed the payment order number and they said they would send a receipt by email which never arrived until now.
“Is it a scam???”, i ask. My heart beats faster.
I used so many subscription based websites, and they all show me the amount visible and in big letters, plus a button: PAY.
For example, a random and non popular website:
Also the subtitle is never about how much you pay:
Next, i tried to contact them by phone but the robot said they don’t work in weekend.
So i waited until next day and called them:
(Robot saying nobody is available = false/non-existent costumer service)
But there was another way to “contact them”. I wrote the message and put my payment order account (seen in the billing page). But guess what a scammer would do:
Everything looks good from the outside. The contact us form, the legal terms, everything looks like a fair company, but they try to avoid in every way the people who were scammed and they make the scamming seem legal.
Where is the company located?
I have never seem a address so short in a New York city company! Normally it at least has the apartment number. I searched the address in google maps and it’s non-existent.
One of their two robots sent me an email on the day of signing up, so i replied them back and pressured them:
If i don’t get any response until tomorrow night,
i will write articles about this and report them to New York State Department Of Consumer Protection: https://www.ny.gov/agencies/division-consumer-protection
and to my friend in department of attorney general: https://www.justice.gov/ag
hopefully you will have a fast response and refund.
Which the reply was:
Canceled and Refunded. Will see it in 24–48 business hours.
Result
As a result, 2 days after, my bank called me and told me i had been charged for $300 again by www.fancy.com (pending) and my first $300 weren’t refunded.
So i decided to ask them what happened:
Refunded and taken off!
Not only a lie, but exactly as they replied, the payment was processed from pending to authorized. Normally a costumer service would apologize and clarify everything.
Probably they would attempt to charge me a third time, but i had closed my visa card already this morning:
After that i showed them my bank statement, which they replied:
It will all be back on Friday!
Which means they acknowledge the second $300 dollars which was charged without any kind of permission.
What are other people saying about FANCY?
I researched a little (only after scammed sadly), and i saw a huge unhappiness in people buying things from the www.fancy.com. From items that charge multiple times and others that don’t arrive. They complain also about not being able to contact them after trying for 5 months (crazy):
https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/fancy.com (77 % 1 star)
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/fancy.com (87% 1 star)
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/fancy-com-just-another-scam.596098/
https://www.scamadviser.com/is-fancy.com-safe.html (this site says that the real company location is being hidden)
Also i read about photographers that are stolen their images which doesn’t violate any legal copyrights within the www.fancy.com website but it protects it and promotes it in which the author calls “Loop Hole in the Law”:
https://fstoppers.com/editorial/fancycom-uses-major-loop-hole-law-use-your-images-8017
Conclusion
This company is a total scam. They mislead sellers into a $300 subscription (which is not even worth compared to amazon $39 subscription) and they take advantage of us. The credit Card Info page is designed to legally hack into the attention flaw of people and trap sellers into a $300 paying immediately (without any confirmation or way to reverse it), plus continuing during 12 months.
Not only that, they lied about refunding and withdrew $300 more without any permission whatsoever.
I believe there must be made justice to this company.
They had everything to be a long term and successful company. Powerful marketing, good funding, design, and even had many buyer-side costumers in play-store. But they found a way to take advantage of sellers and their greediness made this company a cockroach sucking our time, money and patience.
Now they are going under Government investigation and hopefully shutdown.
