Beforrlong.com Scam Alert: Beware of Counterfeit Products and More

Beforrlong.com is a fraudulent website that offers to purchase items at unusually discounted prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a narrative to make you think this site is legitimate. After ordering goods from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will demonstrate the warning signs regarding the Beforrlong.com site, the way this deception operates, and teach how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in future.

Beforrlong.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Beforrlong.com may initially appear like a genuine discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Unfair advertising methods, extremely low prices, absence of user support and customer reviews – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.

Beforrlong.com Scam

By shopping on sites like Beforrlong.com, it is improbable that you will obtain the items you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 situations typical 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 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 common case when ordering from pages that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the transaction look legit, but spend even less money on the actual item, frauds may ship a accidental item they have on hand instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a branded one, a dirty aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn really inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most frequent outcome when ordering from websites like Beforrlong.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, scams are not wasting effort creating even a slight sight of legitimacy.

Beforrlong.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Beforrlong.com follows a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It usually consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post massive amounts of promotions on social media, 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms benign, 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 individuals are on the website, scammers do their best to make the consumers buy something. Impossibly good deals, additional discount promo codes, 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 unusual manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, fraudsters 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 swindlers get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user feedback about the site being fraudulent, they simply disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people are aware about the fraudulent activity, the profits will dry up, leaving swindlers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Beforrlong.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, rascals 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 purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack customer reviews shortly after the start, as there were not many buyers 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, when you face unrealistic reviews that have nothing to do with what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or absurdity reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on scam 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% reductions are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, fraudulent websites set the prices 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 for cheap, but every discount has its rational limits.

3. No customer support.

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

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

When they offer an email, or even a phone number to contact them, there is a great possibility that these contacts will be unresponsive to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.

As scoundrels tend to reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are used 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 whole lot of genuine shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. Each of the latter has the same feature I’ve already mentioned above: these methods do not suppose any refund options. And this is what makes it so attractive to scammers – once you paid for the order, nothing will help you to get the money back.

Some sites 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 frauds.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As frauds are unlikely to have any items on hand, they are not able to shoot unique pics. Thus their option is simply to hijack these images elsewhere. When rascals sell identical items on different websites, you can find same images on similarly-looking 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

This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As rascals may parasite on the same topic again and again, they put the same site design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the identical copy of the page you’ve started on. It allows you to uncover such scams particularly easy, but crooks who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Beforrlong.com Scam