Aaedt.com Scam Store: What You Need To Know

Aaedt.com is a fraudulent website that offers to purchase clothes at unusually discounted prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a ploy to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. Upon placing an order on this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will demonstrate the warning signs regarding the Aaedt.com shop, the way this deception operates, and explain how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in future.

Aaedt.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Aaedt.com may initially look like a genuine discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s deception. Unfair advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, lack of customer support and user feedback – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.

Aaedt.com Scam

By purchasing items on websites like Aaedt.com, it is unlikely that you will get the goods you’ve ordered. More often, it results in one of 3 situations characteristic for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to fake items of popular brands, the quality will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may notify about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a especially frequent case when ordering from websites that offer baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the deal look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the actual item, frauds may send a random item they have on hand instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a new one, a dirty aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn quite inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most usual case when ordering from sites like Aaedt.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely vanish. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, rascals are not wasting effort creating even a vague visibility of legitimacy.

Aaedt.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Aaedt.com runs a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post abundant amounts of marketing on online platforms, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say the same things as their sites do: 90% discounts, free delivery around the world, hurry up to get the deal.

Ads of fraudulent shops posted on different platforms

As users consider ads on the mentioned platforms genuine, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become especially convincing during major events that boost people’s interest in shopping, like Halloween, Black Friday, Christmas, etc. Sometimes, they disguise themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once consumers are on the website, tricksters do their best to make the users buy something. Impossibly good deals, additional discounts, free shipping, bright and blinking “Order Now” buttons that are just everywhere – they use every single method possible. And this works out – uninformed users stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a curious manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, swindlers offer using direct bank transfers, Venmo or CashApp. Thing is, the latter do not provide any refunds, regardless of the circumstances. Even when you can prove that the transaction went to fraudsters, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.

Step 3 – Vanish. Once scoundrels get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user feedback about the site being fraudulent, they just disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers are aware about the dishonest activity, the profits will dry up, leaving crooks with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Aaedt.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the scam site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is untrustworthy without risking your money. Fortunately, scammers do not bother themselves with creating well-rounded disguises, so the same red flags repeat from one site to another.

1. Fake or absent reviews

Hoax sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any reputation with reviews. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack consumer comments shortly after the start, since there were not many buyers yet. For that reason, this sign is not stand-alone and requires confirmation by other signs or indicators.

Definitely not generic comments generated by AI

However, when you face unrealistic reviews that have nothing to do with what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any unclear or drivel reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on dishonest websites you will get an entire saltcellar. Always search for reviews on Google – this may save your money.

2. Unbelievably high discounts/low prices

No merchants will sell goods at loss for themselves. 70%, 80%, 90% discounts are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, dishonest websites have the initial price low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be preposterous, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold at a low price, but every sell-off has its reasonable limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes dishonest sites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the clients, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the site will likely have no contact info at all.

Typically for fraudulent websites, the “About us” column is completely empty

When they offer an email, or even a phone to contact them, there is a great possibility that these emails and numbers will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your inquiry.

As scammers tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a completely different website, be sure you’re facing a blatant scam.

A chain of scam websites that use the same “support email”

4. Payments via payment systems that does not support refunds

This scam indicator is complementary, as there are a lot of trustworthy services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. Each of the latter has the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what attracts scammers – once you paid for the order, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some sites may also offer payments in crypto, which feature even less control. While crypto payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scams.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As rascals most likely don’t have any items, they cannot shoot unique images. Thus their only option is simply to hijack these images elsewhere. When scams market identical goods on different pages, you can find same images on similarly-designed fraudulent sites. By reverse image searching on Google, you can prove the uniqueness of an image.

Image duplicates on another scam site, as well as on Amazon and Walmart sites

6. Design repeats the one of a different page

Rascals do not steal only pics. As frauds may use the same topic repeatedly, they use the same web design under the new address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such scams particularly easy, but criminals who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Aaedt.com Scam