Victim Location 10455
Total money lost $2.50
Type of a scam Online Purchase
I made a purchase on ilearth.com for a shirt. The website looks very legitimate in various ways, however, they overcharged my debit card, apart from the shipping fee, by a dollar and change more without notifying me. I decided to ignore it at first figuring maybe it was tax that was added. I did a tax calculation according to my state and the amount they added was one cent more than my result. I still ignored it and now a couple of days later I am seeing a 55 cent charge to my debit account that was listed on my statement as a foreign exchange and had some asian writing I couldn’t understand.
I immediately went to my bank and they handled the issue as a theft matter, since they also found it suspicious.
If you go to the terms of service portion of ilearth.com they seem to have everything worded to protect themselves in these matters and actually straight out tell you in their own words that they are not responsible for anything that happens to your information. What kind of website business does not protect themselves and their customers transactions?
Also, they mention that they operate their website via shopify.com. I contacted shopify and shopify has no record of them. Shopify also looked into ilearth.com’s terms page and suspect that they are using their (Shopify’s) terms information to make themselves look legitimate. Shopify also explained to me that any website business that works through them must provide a link to shopify’s policy and terms, which ilearth.com does not do.
Furthermore, ilearth.com’s email is simply a gmail address (mind you, they also never emailed me anything regarding my order) and the California area code contact number they provide is an invalid number.
Even if their business is legitimate, which I seriously doubt, their site is at least being compromised, either way, it’s bad business.
Also, if you’re wondering why only a dollar and change more was taken, and then only 55 cents, this is how these scammers sometimes operate. They take little amounts here and there for as long as they can in hopes you don’t notice, and ultimately accumulate big amounts doing this to many people.
Also note, apart from Amazon or a well known name brand store, I very seldomly shop from other sites, and the few ones I have purchased from have proven themselves to be legitimate. ILEARTH.COM was the ONLY site I have made a purchase from in the past month. So buyer beware!