Dickssportingsale.com is a fraudulent website that offers to buy items from DICK\’S at extremely low prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a story to make you think this site is legitimate. After placing an order on this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.
In this article, I will demonstrate the red flags regarding the Dickssportingsale.com store, the way this fraud operates, and explain how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in future.
Dickssportingsale.com Site – Scam Overview
As I said, Dickssportingsale.com may initially seem like a legit discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Questionable advertising methods, extremely low prices, lack of user support and user testimonials – this site completes the fraud bingo right away.
| Website | Dickssportingsale.com |
| Hosting | AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc. United States, San Francisco |
| IP Address | 104.17.232.29 |
| Threat Type | Scam/Fraud |
| Scam Type | Fraudulent/Scam online shop |
Dickssportingsale.com Scam
By purchasing items on pages like Dickssportingsale.com, it is improbable that you will acquire the items you’ve ordered. More often, it results in one of 3 cases 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 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 especially often case when ordering from pages that sell baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.
Wrong item. To make the trade look legit, but spend even less money on the actual item, frauds 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 scratched aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn really inventive in that case.
Absolutely nothing. This is the most typical scenario when ordering from websites like Dickssportingsale.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely vanish. As scam websites are not going to exist for a long time, rascals do not bother themselves with creating even a remote visibility of legitimacy.
Dickssportingsale.com scam – How does it work?
As any scam, Dickssportingsale.com 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 advertisements on online platforms, 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 legitimate, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become particularly compelling 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, fraudsters do their best to make the consumers buy something. Mind-boggling 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 users stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.
Payments are done in a curious 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 deceivers, “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 fraudulent, they simply disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people are aware about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving fraudsters with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.
Why is Dickssportingsale.com a Scam?
Well, we just talked about the way the fraud site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is fraudulent 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
Scam websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any online reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack consumer comments when they have just started, as there were not many customers 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, when you face phishy-looking reviews that have nothing to do with what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any unclear or nonsense 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. 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% discounts are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, fraudulent sites have the initial price low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be outrageous, 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 reasonable limits.
3. No customer support.
That factor distinguishes deceptive sites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to rip off the buyers, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the page will 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 chance that these emails and numbers will be dead silent to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.
As scammers tend to reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned 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 benign shops and 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: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what attracts scammers – once you’ve sent the money, nothing will help you to get the money back.
Some websites may also ask for payments in cryptocurrency, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While cryptocurrency payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different fraudsters.
5. Items’ images are sourced from another page
As fraudsters most likely don’t have any real items on hand, they cannot shoot unique images. Thus their only option is simply to hijack these images from other sites. When scams offer identical goods on different websites, you can find same pics on similarly-designed fraudulent sites. 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 repeatedly, they use 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 I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the page 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 Dickssportingsale.com Scam
- Contact your bank or card provider and ask about chargeback options.
- Save screenshots, receipts, tracking numbers, and emails as evidence.
- Change reused passwords and enable two-factor authentication on important accounts.
- Watch for follow-up phishing emails pretending to offer refunds or delivery updates.
