Bonpreos.com Scam Store: A Fake Radley London Website

Bonpreos.com is a deceptive website that offers to buy leather bags from Radley London 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 ploy to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. After placing an order on this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will highlight the warning signs regarding the Bonpreos.com site, the way this fraud operates, and show how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in future.

Bonpreos.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Bonpreos.com may initially seem like a legit discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of user support and customer testimonials – this site accomplishes the fraud bingo right away.

Bonpreos.com Scam

By purchasing on websites like Bonpreos.com, it is questionable that you will obtain the goods you’ve ordered. More often, it results in one of 3 scenarios 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 characteristic will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may inform about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a notably common case when ordering from sites that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the purchase look real, but spend even less money on the delivered item, frauds may send a incidental item they have on hand instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a new one, a dented aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn really inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most typical case when ordering from sites like Bonpreos.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely disappear. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, rascals are not wasting effort creating even a faint sight of legitimacy.

Bonpreos.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Bonpreos.com follows a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It usually consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post huge amounts of promotions on social media, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say exactly the same things as the websites 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 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 mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once individuals are on the website, swindlers do their best to make the individuals buy something. Impossibly good 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 individuals stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a peculiar 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 swindlers, “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 complaints and user feedback about the site being a scam, they just 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 reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Bonpreos.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 deceptive without risking your money. Fortunately, fraudsters 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 online reputation with feedback. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack user feedback when they have just started, as there were not many customers 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 phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any indistinct or gibberish reviews that may describe any item sold on the site 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 feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, fraudulent 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 for cheap, but every discount has its rational limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes dishonest sites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the clients, there’s no need to waste time on 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 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 they will answer you with generic text regardless of your inquiry.

As scammers tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a 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 not a guarantee, as there are plenty of benign shops and services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. Each of the latter has the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what makes it so attractive to scammers – once you’ve sent the money, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some websites 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 scammers.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As frauds most likely don’t have any goods on hand, they are not able to create unique pics. Thus their only option is to hijack these images from other websites. When frauds market the same items on different websites, you can find same images on similarly-looking 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

This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As scammers may use the same topic repeatedly, they use the same site design under the new address, and voila – a new scam 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 uncover such frauds particularly easy, but scoundrels who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Bonpreos.com Scam