1. Online Consumer Complaints
You can easily find a lot of online complaints about these e-commerce websites by searching for them on Google. Therefore, if a company receives a lot of complaints, something is definitely wrong. The majority of these complaints are either about the product’s poor quality or about the product not being delivered even after the order was confirmed. These fraudulent websites operate by charging money, taking it, and then either not doing anything or giving the customer a subpar or duplicate product.
2. Owner Information & Contact Details
The next most crucial step is to look up the websites’ contact information. We can’t seem to locate the company’s contact information, or what we can see on their websites is an incomplete or phony address. On their website, they occasionally only offer a mobile number and email address, which they use to entice and con people. If they don’t have an address, it’s best to avoid them. Additionally, remember that you cannot contact them via email or phone number. Furthermore, the fact that we were unable to locate the owner’s information through the Domain Name Whois records indicates that the owner may have concealed their identity and contact information by using a proxy company, which is also not a good sign.
3. Low Quality Website
Each of these phony websites will have an extremely shoddy website design in addition to shoddy product photos that are low resolution and blurry. The majority of these photos are plagiarized from other design blogs or websites. If you examine the pictures carefully, you can see that they have watermarks or copyright information. The website will have a template-based design with a lot of broken links and fake text that makes it obvious that it is a fake. Texts that are dummy or irrelevant were discovered when we examined key pages such as the terms and conditions, privacy policy, refund policy, and about us.
4. Heavy Discounts
Every single one of these fraudulent websites will give clients steep discounts, often at extremely low costs in comparison to other e-commerce sites. These days, a lot of these scam websites attract ordinary people by offering amazing deals, since people like to shop at discounts. Sometimes they entice unsuspecting customers by showing discount and coupon codes along with a countdown that indicates the sale will end in a short while.
5. Social Activity
Many of them have no presence at all on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Google+, and others where we are unable to find any genuine activity. However, occasionally these fraudulent websites will “buy” phony likes in order to appear to have a lot of likes on their page. But if you closely examine the reviews and comments left by customers on these social media accounts, you can quickly identify them. Customers typically complain about fake low-quality products, different products, or no delivery, which indicates that the company is a scam.
How to stay away from Scams?
It’s a wise saying that prevention is better than cure. This also applies to protecting yourself from fraudulent online portals or scam websites.
1. Avoid being duped by amazing deals and offers that seem too good to be true.
2. Check the Most Recent Scams page prior to purchasing services or products
3. Use ComplaintLists website to find complaints and read reviews.
4. Check frequently brought up concerns in e-commerce complaints.
You have been scammed and want to recover your money?
In the event that you have already fallen victim to one of these fraudulent e-commerce websites, report the scam to complaintlists.com right away and warn others about it.
You can also speak with a lawyer to learn about your options for recovering money and your legal rights.