Analyzing Ava-London.com: Should You Trust It? Our Take

Ava-London.com is a deceptive website that offers to buy clothes at exceptionally cheap prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is in fact just a story to make you think this site is legitimate. After ordering from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

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

Ava-London.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Ava-London.com may initially appear like a genuine discounter or the seller 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 user support and customer testimonials – this site accomplishes the scam bingo right away.

Ava-London.com Scam

By purchasing items on pages like Ava-London.com, it is improbable that you will get the items you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 scenarios standard for scam sites.

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

Wrong item. To make the trade look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the delivered item, rascals may send a accidental item they have instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a branded one, a dirty aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn really inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most typical situation when ordering items from websites like Ava-London.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, scams do not bother themselves with creating even a remote semblance of legitimacy.

Ava-London.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Ava-London.com runs 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 promotions 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 benevolent, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become especially persuasive during major events that boost people’s interest in shopping, like Halloween, Black Friday, Christmas, etc. Sometimes, they mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once users are on the site, fraudsters do their best to make the customers buy something. Impossibly good deals, additional discounts, free delivery, 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 quirky 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 scammers, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.

Step 3 – Vanish. Once rascals get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints 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 know about the deceptive activity, the profits will dry up, leaving crooks with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Ava-London.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the hoax site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is untrustworthy without risking your money. Fortunately, frauds 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

Fraud websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack client testimonials shortly after the start, as there were only a few patrons yet. For that reason, this sign is not stand-alone and must be confirmed with other signs or indicators.

Definitely not generic comments generated by AI

However, once you face unrealistic reviews that have nothing to do with what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or gibberish reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on deceptive 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% reductions are not viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, deceptive websites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be absurd, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold for cheap, but every discount has its reasonable limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes scam sites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to rip off the clients, there’s no need to bother about answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the page will likely have no support contacts whatsoever.

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

When they offer a contact email, or even a phone number to contact them, there is a huge chance that these numbers and emails will be dead silent to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

As frauds tend to reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a totally different site, be sure you are 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 benign shops and services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. 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 sites may also offer payments in crypto, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While cryptocurrency transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scammers.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As fraudsters are unlikely to have any items on hand, they are not able to shoot unique pics. Thus their only option is to hijack these images from other sites. When rascals offer the same items on different websites, you can find such pics on similarly-designed scam sites. By searching for the image 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 copy only photos. As frauds may scam people on the same topic repeatedly, they put the same web design under the new web-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 identical copy of the original site. It allows you to unveil such frauds particularly easy, but scoundrels who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are situations when Ava-London.com website, together with similar scam pages, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are two particular malware types that aim specifically at such purposes. If you notice excessive amounts of ads in your web browser, have your search inquiries redirected into a different search engine and some random pages open time to time, scan your PC with GridinSoft Anti-Malware. This will help you to get rid of annoying promotions and scam sites.

Remove malware with Gridinsoft Anti-Malware

We have also been using this software on our systems ever since, and it has always been successful in detecting viruses. It has blocked the most common adware as shown from our tests with the software, and we assure you that it can remove malware as well as other malware hiding on your computer.

To use Gridinsoft for remove malicious threats, follow the steps below:

1. Begin by downloading Gridinsoft Anti-Malware, accessible via the blue button below or directly from the official website gridinsoft.com.

2.Once the Gridinsoft setup file (setup-gridinsoft-fix.exe) is downloaded, execute it by clicking on the file.

3.Follow the installation setup wizard's instructions diligently.

4. Access the "Scan Tab" on the application's start screen and launch a comprehensive "Full Scan" to examine your entire computer. This inclusive scan encompasses the memory, startup items, the registry, services, drivers, and all files, ensuring that it detects malware hidden in all possible locations.

Be patient, as the scan duration depends on the number of files and your computer's hardware capabilities. Use this time to relax or attend to other tasks.

5. Upon completion, Anti-Malware will present a detailed report containing all the detected malicious items and threats on your PC.

6. Select all the identified items from the report and confidently click the "Clean Now" button. This action will safely remove the malicious files from your computer, transferring them to the secure quarantine zone of the anti-malware program to prevent any further harmful actions.

8. If prompted, restart your computer to finalize the full system scan procedure. This step is crucial to ensure thorough removal of any remaining threats. After the restart, Gridinsoft Anti-Malware will open and display a message confirming the completion of the scan.

Remember Gridinsoft offers a 6-day free trial. This means you can take advantage of the trial period at no cost to experience the full benefits of the software and prevent any future malware infections on your system. Embrace this opportunity to fortify your computer's security without any financial commitment.

Frequently Asked Questions about the Ava-London.com Scam