Acompletesecrets.com Scam Store: A Fake Macy\’s Website

Acompletesecrets.com is a fraudulent website that offers to buy various goods from Macy’s at unusually discounted prices. It may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is actually just a ploy to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon ordering from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will show the red flags regarding the Acompletesecrets.com shop, the way this fraud operates, and show how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in future.

Acompletesecrets.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Acompletesecrets.com may initially appear like a legit discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Unfair advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, lack of customer support and user testimonials – this site fulfills the scam bingo right away.

Acompletesecrets.com Scam

By shopping on websites like Acompletesecrets.com, it is uncertain that you will get the goods you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 situations standard for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to counterfeit items of popular brands, the attribute 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 notably frequent case when ordering from pages that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the purchase look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the actual item, frauds may send a incidental item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a branded one, a scratched aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn quite inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most typical outcome when ordering from websites like Acompletesecrets.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply disappear. As scam websites do not aim to exist for a long time, rascals do not bother themselves with creating even a faint visibility of legitimacy.

Acompletesecrets.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Acompletesecrets.com follows a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It usually consists of 3 stages, with some slight 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 exactly 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 regard ads on the mentioned platforms genuine, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become particularly persuasive 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 customers are on the site, tricksters do their best to make the individuals buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discount promo codes, free shipping, bright and blinking “Order Now” buttons that are just everywhere – they use every single method possible. And this works out – uninformed consumers stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a quirky manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, scammers 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 reports regarding the site being a scam, they just disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals know about the deceptive activity, the profits will dry up, leaving cheats with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Acompletesecrets.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, scams 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

Scam sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any reputation with feedback. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack user feedback shortly after the start, since there were only a few consumers 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 phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any blurred or absurdity reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on dishonest sites 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% markdowns are not viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, scam websites have the initial price low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be ridiculous, 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 logical limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes scam websites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the buyers, there’s no need to bother about answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the page 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 reach them out, there is a great chance that these numbers and emails will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

As scoundrels often reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a different site, 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 genuine services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. All of them though have the same feature I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what attracts scammers – once you’ve sent the money, nothing will help you to get the money back.

Some websites may also offer payments in cryptocurrency, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different fraudsters.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As rascals most likely don’t have any items, they cannot shoot unique pics. Thus their only option is simply to hijack these images from other sites. When scams market the same items on different pages, you can find same images on similarly-designed scam sites. By reverse image searching on Google, you can prove whether the image is unique or not.

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

6. Design repeats the one of a different page

This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As rascals may use the same topic repeatedly, they put the same site design under the new URL, 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 page you’ve started on. It allows you to uncover such scams pretty easy, but scammers who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Acompletesecrets.com Scam