Is Carddingshop.com Legit or a Ripoff? Our In-Depth Investigation

Carddingshop.com is a scam website that offers to buy items at extremely low prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is actually just a ploy to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. Upon ordering goods from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

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

Carddingshop.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Carddingshop.com may initially look like a authentic discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s deception. Unfair advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, lack of user support and customer reviews – this site accomplishes the scam bingo right away.

Carddingshop.com Scam

By purchasing on sites like Carddingshop.com, it is doubtful that you will receive 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 grade 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 often case when ordering from websites that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

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

Nothing at all. This is the most frequent outcome when ordering from websites like Carddingshop.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then just vanish. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, rascals do not bother themselves with creating even a remote visibility of legitimacy.

Carddingshop.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Carddingshop.com runs a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post abundant amounts of promotions on social media, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say 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 regard ads on the mentioned platforms benign, they do not suspect 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 mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once consumers are on the site, swindlers do their best to make the users buy something. Mind-boggling 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 customers 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 crooks get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user reports regarding the site being a scam, they just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals know about the deceptive activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving fraudsters with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Carddingshop.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 deceptive 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 reason (and way) to make any online reputation with reviews. Obviously, even legit shopping sites will lack consumer comments when they have just started, as there were only a few 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, when you face phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any vague or drivel 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 Black Friday. In some cases, scam sites 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 at a low price, but every sell-off has its logical limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes dishonest websites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the customers, 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 support contacts whatsoever.

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 huge chance that these emails and numbers will be dead silent to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

As scammers often reuse numbers and emails for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned on a different website, 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 not a guarantee, as there are a whole lot of genuine services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. All of them though have the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: these methods do not suppose any refund options. And this is what attracts scammers – once you paid for the order, nothing will help you to get the money back.

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

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As fraudsters most likely don’t have any goods on hand, they cannot shoot unique pics. Thus their option is simply to steal these images from other sites. When rascals sell identical goods on different sites, you can find same pics on similarly-designed fraudulent sites. By searching for the image 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 again and again, they reuse the same web design under the new address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search on Google advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such scams pretty easy, but scammers 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 Carddingshop.com site, along with similar scam sites, 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 going in a different search engine and some random pages open time to time, scan your device 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:

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Frequently Asked Questions about the Carddingshop.com Scam