Explicitlyes.online Scam Store: A Fake Apple Website

Explicitlyes.online is a deceptive website that offers to buy smarphones, computers and smart watches from Apple at extremely low 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 this site is legitimate. Upon ordering from 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 Explicitlyes.online shop, the way this fraud operates, and show how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in upcoming times.

Explicitlyes.online Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Explicitlyes.online may initially look like a genuine discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Questionable advertising methods, extremely low prices, absence of customer support and customer feedback – this site completes the scam bingo right away.

Explicitlyes.online Scam

By shopping on pages like Explicitlyes.online, it is questionable that you will acquire the goods you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 instances common 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 grade will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may indicate about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a notably often case when ordering from websites that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

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

Nothing at all. This is the most usual outcome when ordering from pages like Explicitlyes.online. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, frauds do not bother themselves with creating even a remote sight of legitimacy.

Explicitlyes.online scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Explicitlyes.online follows a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It usually consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post huge amounts of promotions 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 consider ads on the mentioned platforms legitimate, 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 individuals are on the site, deceivers do their best to make the individuals buy something. Impossibly good 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 strange 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 scammers, “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 fraudulent, they just disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals are aware about the dishonest activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving scammers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Explicitlyes.online 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 sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack consumer comments when they have just started, as there were only a few 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, once you face phishy-looking reviews that have nothing to do with what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or absurdity reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on fraudulent 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% discounts are not viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, dishonest sites have the initial price 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 sell-off has its reasonable limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes dishonest websites from the legit 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 site will likely have no support contacts whatsoever.

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

When they offer an email, or even a phone number to contact them, there is a huge chance that these numbers and emails will be unresponsive to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.

As scoundrels often reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a different website, be sure that this is 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 whole lot of benign services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. Each of the latter has 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, nothing will help you to get the money back.

Some websites may also offer payments in cryptocurrency, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto transactions 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 items, they cannot make unique images. Thus their option is simply to hijack these images elsewhere. When rascals sell identical goods on different sites, you can find same pics on similarly-designed scam pages. By searching for the image on Google, you can prove whether the image is unique or not.

Image duplicates on another scam site, as well as on Amazon and Walmart sites

6. Design repeats the one of a different page

Rascals do not steal only pics. As frauds may scam people on the same topic again and again, they put the same web design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the identical copy of the site you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such frauds particularly easy, but scoundrels who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Explicitlyes.online Scam