Custom-shirts.shop Exposed: Legit or Total Scam? Our Findings

Custom-shirts.shop is a fraudulent website that offers to buy items at exceptionally cheap prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a ploy to make you think this site is legitimate. 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 show the red flags regarding the Custom-shirts.shop site, the way this deception operates, and teach how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in future.

Custom-shirts.shop Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Custom-shirts.shop may initially seem like a authentic discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Questionable advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, absence of customer support and user testimonials – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.

Custom-shirts.shop Scam

By shopping on pages like Custom-shirts.shop, it is improbable that you will obtain the goods you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 instances typical for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to fraudulent 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 especially often case when ordering from sites that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the purchase look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the delivered item, frauds may send a random item they have on hand instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a new one, a dirty aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn quite inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most frequent case when ordering goods from pages like Custom-shirts.shop. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, frauds do not bother themselves with creating even a remote semblance of legitimacy.

Custom-shirts.shop scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Custom-shirts.shop follows a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It usually consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post abundant amounts of marketing 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 consider ads on the mentioned platforms benign, they do not doubt 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 disguise themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once individuals are on the site, tricksters do their best to make the consumers 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 users 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 scammers, “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 reports regarding the site being fraudulent, they simply vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers are aware about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving swindlers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Custom-shirts.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 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 reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack buyer opinions when they have just started, since there were only a few clients 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 absurdity reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on deceptive 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% markdowns are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, fraudulent 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 for cheap, but every discount has its logical limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes fraudulent websites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud 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 support contacts whatsoever.

Typically for fraudulent websites, 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 unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

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 completely 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 lot of legit services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. Each of the latter has the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what attracts scammers – once you’ve sent the money, 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 scammers most likely don’t have any real items on hand, they are not able to shoot unique pics. Thus their only option is to hijack these images elsewhere. When scams market identical goods on different pages, you can find same 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

Scammers do not stop on stealing pictures. As scammers may parasite on the same topic again and again, they reuse the same site design under the new web-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 site you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such frauds pretty easy, but criminals who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Custom-shirts.shop Scam