Is Chortle.shop A Scam? The Hard Facts You Need To Know

Chortle.shop is a scam website that offers to buy items at exceptionally cheap prices. It may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is actually just a story 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 show the warning signs regarding the Chortle.shop shop, the way this fraud operates, and teach how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in upcoming times.

Chortle.shop Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Chortle.shop may initially appear like a legit discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s deception. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of user support and customer testimonials – this site accomplishes the scam bingo right away.

Chortle.shop Scam

By purchasing items on sites like Chortle.shop, it is questionable that you will get the goods you’ve ordered. More often, 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 imitation items of popular brands, the attribute will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may mention 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 websites that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the deal look real, but spend even less money on the actual item, scammers may send a accidental item they have on hand instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a dirty aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn quite inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most common outcome when ordering goods from websites like Chortle.shop. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, scammers do not bother themselves with creating even a faint semblance of legitimacy.

Chortle.shop scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Chortle.shop runs a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post massive amounts of advertisements 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 genuine, 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 customers are on the website, swindlers do their best to make the individuals buy something. Mind-boggling 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 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, 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 tricksters, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.

Step 3 – Vanish. Once tricksters get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user reports about the site being a scam, they simply disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals are aware about the deceptive activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving scammers with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Chortle.shop 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, scams 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 websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack user feedback when they have just started, since 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, once you face phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any vague or nonsense 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. 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 sites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be ridiculous, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold for cheap, but every discount has its logical limits.

3. No customer support.

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

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

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

As frauds tend to reuse numbers and emails for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned on a totally different site, 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 lot of legit 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 makes it so attractive to scammers – once you paid for the order, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some sites may also ask for 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 rascals are unlikely to have any items on hand, they cannot create unique images. Thus their option is to hijack these images from other sites. When rascals sell identical goods on different sites, you can find same pics on similarly-looking scam pages. 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 frauds may scam people on the same topic again and again, they reuse the same web design under the new address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search on Google advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the copy of the original site. It allows you to unveil such scams particularly easy, but crooks who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Chortle.shop Scam