We Dug Into Dinouous.com: Legit Store or A Scam?

Dinouous.com is a deceptive website that offers to buy clothes at exceptionally cheap 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. After ordering from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will show the warning signs regarding the Dinouous.com store, the way this deception operates, and show how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in future.

Dinouous.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Dinouous.com may initially appear like a genuine discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Unfair advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, lack of user support and user reviews – this site fulfills the scam bingo right away.

Dinouous.com Scam

By shopping on sites like Dinouous.com, it is improbable that you will obtain the items you’ve ordered. More frequently, 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 fake items of popular brands, the grade 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 notably frequent case when ordering from pages that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the transaction look real, but spend even less money on the delivered item, scammers may send a incidental item they have on hand instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a branded one, a scratched aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn rather inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most frequent scenario when ordering from websites like Dinouous.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scam websites are not going to exist for a long time, fraudsters do not bother themselves with creating even a remote visibility of legitimacy.

Dinouous.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Dinouous.com 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. Scammers post abundant 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 regard ads on the mentioned platforms genuine, 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 disguise themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once consumers are on the site, tricksters do their best to make the individuals buy something. Impossibly good deals, additional discounts, 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 quirky 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 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 grievances and user feedback regarding the site being fraudulent, they just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers know about the fraudulent activity, the profits will dry up, leaving fraudsters with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Dinouous.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the hoax site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is fraudulent 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

Hoax sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any reputation with reviews. Obviously, even legit shopping sites will lack user feedback when they have just started, as there were not many 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, 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 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% discounts are not viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, dishonest sites set the prices 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 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 buyers, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page (if it is present at all) – the site will most likely 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 to contact them, there is a huge chance that these emails and numbers will be unresponsive to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your inquiry.

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 different website, be sure you’re 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 plenty 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 attracts 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 is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While cryptocurrency transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scams.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As rascals most likely don’t have any goods, they are not able to make unique pics. Thus their only option is to steal these images elsewhere. When scams sell the same goods on different websites, you can find same pics on similarly-designed 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 put 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 copy of the original site. It allows you to uncover such frauds particularly easy, but crooks who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Dinouous.com Scam