How to tell if a fashion site is legit?

April 11, 2023 12:21 PM

Is there a review site that specifically analyzes whether a given website, particularly fashion retailers, are legit?

I get a zillion Facebook ads for fashion sites and more and more of them appear to offer clothes in my size, which is yay! But now instead of just dismissing them because they don't fit me anyway, now I need to figure out which, if any of them, are reliable, in the sense that they will actually deliver, in a reasonable time period, clothing items that are the size they are supposed to be, and resemble the items in the photos in cut, quality and color, all without stealing my credit card number.

So, is there a website that's already doing the work of figuring this out?

I know some of the signs to look for (names that make sense, coherent photo shoots, models with heads, no stolen photos, looking up domain registration info, etc) but I would rather someone else do that work, so are there any sites that do that? I am specifically not looking for advice on how to check myself -- I want to know if anyone else is already doing it.

posted by jacquilynne to Shopping (12 answers total)

There's Trustpilot. Not sure if it does everything you need but seems to verify legit websites.
posted by Liquidwolf at 12:36 PM on April 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Do you have an NY Times subscription? This recent article was quite illuminating:

On top of all of this, it turns out that targeted ads aren’t helping consumers, either. Last year, researchers at Carnegie Mellon and Virginia Tech presented a study of the consumer welfare implications of targeted ads. The results were so surprising that the researchers repeated the study to make sure their findings were correct.

The new study, published online this week, confirmed the results: The targeted ads shown to another set of nearly 500 participants were pitching more expensive products from lower-quality vendors than identical products that showed up in a simple web search.

The products shown in targeted ads were, on average, roughly 10 percent more expensive than what users could find by searching online. And the products were more than twice as likely to be sold by lower-quality vendors, as measured by their Better Business Bureau ratings.

I've had the same question as you. Sometimes it's as easy as looking at the comments under the ads; some of these companies aren't able to keep up with the slew of negative comments. And, while this isn't exactly a review site, sometimes you can look up the kind or style of item on Amazon. When you see 100 results showing roughly the same item in the same style with similar photos as the ad, you can sorta see what's going on.
posted by bluedaisy at 1:08 PM on April 11, 2023

I wish there was a site like this. I usually just google "name of company" + "sucks" and see what comes up. If there are a ton of links, you really don't need to go any further. Angry people pretty much always use the word sucks.
posted by mygothlaundry at 1:16 PM on April 11, 2023

I Google for "name of company" and "scam" together and probably get the same results as mygothlaundry.

I note that the last time I tried "dresslily.com scam" I found this website, which gave a very thorough and detailed review of them that boiled down to "technically not a scam, but they're in China and highly dubious on customer service and shipping." So advisoryhq.com actually impressed me with their breakdown. Try that one?
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:28 PM on April 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

Not quite what you're looking for, but Madeline Pendleton on TikTok does a lot of reviews of e-commerce sites and talks through her process for deciding if the site is legit or not in an accessible and clear way.
posted by LeeLanded at 1:49 PM on April 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

The fakespot browser extension might weed out a number of sites. I use it and it throws up notices on sites beyond Amazon and eBay. It's probably better at identifying bogus sites than it is at identifying legit sites.
posted by cocoagirl at 2:20 PM on April 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

Good on You! There is an app and they evaluate companies on their labor and environmental practices.

Good On You
posted by tiny frying pan at 2:23 PM on April 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

If the prices look too good to be true, they probably are.

Check where the company is from. Personally: if it’s coming from China and you haven’t heard of the company, I wouldn’t buy it.
posted by vanitas at 2:28 PM on April 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

My method is to google the clothing item name and see what pops up. I routinely find that a retailer has stolen the name and images from a legit company to sell me . . . who knows what? Maybe I'd get a decent knock-off, but maybe I'd get something unwearable or nothing at all. It's usually pretty clear when you see the legit company's site, social media, etc. Then you can purchase the item from the reputable site.
posted by annaramma at 2:48 PM on April 11, 2023

Facebook accepts ads from anybody who pays. There are sites that use photos from legit retailers, who will send you some approximation of the item. There are other sites that use photos from legit retailers, and will simply take the money and vanish. Fb does not appear to take down ads of either. You can use image search; if an item of clothing appears in a bunch of places, be cautious. if you search Ask.Me using site:ask.metafilter.com, and the site is recommended, it's likely legit.
posted by theora55 at 3:48 PM on April 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Just want to clarify that I am not looking for advice on how to do the detective work myself. I can do it, but I find it time consuming and annoying and I would rather just look up the results of work that other people have done. So far, Trustpilot looks promising for that.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:59 PM on April 11, 2023

Seconding Trustpilot, I use it constantly. I would even say that if a vendor doesn't have a Trustpilot profile, that's enough of a reason not to buy from them.
posted by guessthis at 3:00 AM on April 12, 2023