Is Cenelope.shop Legit or a Scam? What You Need to Know

Cenelope.shop is a scam website that offers to buy clothing at unusually discounted prices. It may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is actually just a narrative to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. Upon 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 demonstrate the warning signs regarding the Cenelope.shop store, the way this scam operates, and show how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in future.

Cenelope.shop Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Cenelope.shop may initially look like a authentic 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 deception. Unfair advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, absence of customer support and user feedback – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.

Cenelope.shop Scam

By purchasing items on websites like Cenelope.shop, it is improbable that you will acquire the goods you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 situations characteristic 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 notify about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a particularly common case when ordering from pages that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the trade look legit, but spend even less money on the delivered item, scammers may ship a incidental item they have on hand instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a scratched aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn quite inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most frequent outcome when ordering goods from sites like Cenelope.shop. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scam websites do not aim to exist for a long time, rascals do not bother themselves with creating even a remote semblance of legitimacy.

Cenelope.shop scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Cenelope.shop 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. Frauds post huge amounts of advertisements on online platforms, 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms benign, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become particularly 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 users are on the website, swindlers do their best to make the users 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 customers 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, tricksters 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 swindlers get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user feedback about the site being a scam, they simply vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people are aware about the dishonest activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving crooks with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Cenelope.shop 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, 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 purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with feedback. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack buyer opinions when they have just started, as there were only a few patrons 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, once you face phishy-looking reviews that have nothing to do with what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any vague or gibberish reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on fraudulent websites you will get an entire saltcellar. Do not hesitate searching 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 Christmas. In some cases, dishonest sites 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 sell-off has its logical limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes scam websites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the buyers, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the site will have no support contacts at all.

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

As scoundrels often reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a totally different website, be sure you are facing a blatant scam.

A chain of scam sites 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 trustworthy services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. 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 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 payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different frauds.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As frauds most likely don’t have any goods on hand, they cannot make unique pictures. Thus their option is to hijack these images from other websites. When fraudsters market identical items on different pages, you can find such images on similarly-designed scam pages. 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

Rascals do not copy only pictures. As rascals may parasite on the same topic repeatedly, they use 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 original site. It makes uncovering such scams pretty easy, but criminals who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are situations when Cenelope.shop website, along with similar scam pages, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are two particular malware types known for such behavior. If you notice excessive ads in your browser, have your search queries redirected into a different search engine and some random pages open time to time, scan your system 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 Cenelope.shop Scam