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

Colesdar.shop is a fraudulent website that offers to purchase items at exceptionally cheap prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is in fact just a ploy to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. After ordering from 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 Colesdar.shop site, the way this fraud operates, and explain how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in upcoming times.

Colesdar.shop Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Colesdar.shop may initially look 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, unreasonably low prices, absence of user support and user testimonials – this site accomplishes the fraud bingo right away.

Colesdar.shop Scam

By purchasing items on sites like Colesdar.shop, it is improbable that you will obtain the items you’ve ordered. More commonly, it results in one of 3 situations common for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to fake items of popular brands, the quality 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 specifically frequent case when ordering from pages that sell baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

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

Absolutely nothing. This is the most common case when ordering from pages like Colesdar.shop. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then just vanish. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, frauds are not wasting time creating even a faint visibility of legitimacy.

Colesdar.shop scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Colesdar.shop follows 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. Scammers post massive amounts of advertisements 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 benevolent, 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 customers are on the site, scammers do their best to make the customers 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 individuals stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a strange 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 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 fraudulent, they just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals know about the fraudulent activity, the profits will dry up, leaving cheats with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Colesdar.shop a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the fraud site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is untrustworthy without risking your money. Fortunately, frauds 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

Hoax 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 shopping sites will lack consumer comments shortly after the start, as there were not many patrons 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 no relation to what the site offers for sale, 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% markdowns are not viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, scam websites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be ludicrous, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold at a low price, but every discount has its logical limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes dishonest websites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud 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 contact info whatsoever.

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 huge possibility 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 often reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned on a 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 not a guarantee, as there are a whole lot of legit 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 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 scams are unlikely to have any goods on hand, they cannot shoot unique pictures. Thus their only option is simply to hijack these images from other websites. When scammers sell the same goods on different sites, you can find same pics on similarly-looking scam 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 repeatedly, they reuse the same site design under the new web-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 identical copy of the original site. It allows you to uncover such frauds pretty easy, but scoundrels who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Colesdar.shop Scam