Wells & Monroe Charleston

In Meta ads, Wells & Monroe Charleston tells its origin story – how the idea to open a boutique in the South Carolina coastal town was born out of a shared frustration two women had over the lack of clothing options for women over 50. Their names: Wells and Monroe.

It still surprises Wells and Monroe, some days, that a conversation over cold coffee in Charleston turned into something real women built their lives around. But that’s what happens when something is built on the truth.

But is that really what happened?

TINA.org took a closer look at this purported boutique and found a company not built on truth but on lies.

Here’s what you need to know.

A ‘little brand’ with a big footprint

On its website, Wells & Monroe Charleston describes itself as a “little brand,” and features images of what appears to be the local shop.

But some digging reveals a different – and conflicting – story.

For starters, there is no business address listed on the website and no business in South Carolina registered under the name “Wells & Monroe” or “Wells & Monroe Charleston” or similar names. And in the company’s terms of service, the purported local boutique discloses that it is registered as an “international enterprise.” Its shipping policy similarly states that the company operates a “global curator network” and partners with “producers worldwide.” Meanwhile, its Facebook profile says it is based in Newark, New Jersey, not Charleston.

In Meta ads, Wells & Monroe Charleston also claims that women have been coming back to shop at its store “season after season” and expresses gratitude for those “who have been here from the beginning.” But according to the domain registration database website whois.com, the domain wells-monroe.com was only recently registered, in March 2026.

AI fingerprints

AI image detection tools put the likelihood of the store images above being created by AI between 97% and 99.9%.

We also ran the full text of the origin story in Meta ads through an AI detector, which resulted in a “highly confident” assessment that the text was generated by AI.

We found further AI fingerprints in the file names of images of clothing on the website, which included “ChatGPTImage” and “Gemini_Generated_Image” in the URLs.

Dressed to deceive

In addition to AI-generated images of clothing, the Wells & Monroe Charleston website appears to use images from Chinese e-commerce sites Temu and Shein.

And as shown above, to the extent that Wells & Monroe Charleston is selling the same clothing, it’s charging much more than these popular fast-fashion websites.

Additional issues

On product pages, Wells & Monroe Charleston advertises a “30-Day Money-Back Guarantee” and “easy returns.” But the company’s refund policy (linked at the very bottom of its website) states that:

Return shipping costs, including international shipping and any potential customs duties, are the sole responsibility of the customer.

And while listings tout that the company has thousands of five-star reviews and more than 50,000 “satisfied customers,” these happy consumers are nowhere to be found. The company’s Trustpilot profile, for example, has a total of five reviews, four of which are one-star.

Among the issues consumers have reported on Trustpilot are receiving items shipped from China, not Charleston, return shipping costing more than the purchase price and poor quality items. And a consumer who complained to the BBB reported:

The company advertised that orders would ship within 24 hours of receipt but failed to disclose anywhere during the purchasing process that the products were being shipped from Asia. … The company also represented that returns were simple and easy. However, after receiving the products and requesting a return, I was informed that I would be responsible for shipping the items back to Asia at my own expense. … In addition, the products received were of significantly lower quality than advertised. The fabric was extremely thin, the workmanship was poor, and the items did not resemble the quality depicted on the company’s website. …

Wells & Monroe Charleston did not respond to a request for comment.

The bottom line

Fueled by AI, online shopping scams are getting harder to spot. And tricky to stop. For example, earlier this year, TINA.org reported on a shop called Linda & Rachel Boutique, whose website was taken down after our publication. But the similarities between Linda & Rachel and Wells & Monroe are difficult to ignore. Just take a look at the two homepages:

These imposter scams appear to be on the rise so consumers need to remain vigilant. Just because an e-commerce site seems legit doesn’t mean it is not using AI, misleading refund claims or fake reviews to ensnare consumers looking for deals online.

Before trusting a company with your money, make sure to read the terms of money-back guarantees and check what consumers have to say on a variety of third-party review platforms. And if you are struggling to obtain a refund from a company like Wells & Monroe Charleston, consider documenting your experience and reporting it to your bank or credit card company to potentially reverse the charge.

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