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

Factorysalestore.com is a fraudulent website that offers to purchase women clothing at unusually discounted 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. After ordering from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

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

Factorysalestore.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Factorysalestore.com may initially appear like a legit discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s deception. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, absence of user support and customer reviews – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.

Factorysalestore.com Scam

By purchasing items on pages like Factorysalestore.com, it is uncertain that you will acquire the items you’ve ordered. More commonly, it results in one of 3 scenarios characteristic 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 characteristic 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 particularly common case when ordering from websites that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the deal look legit, but spend even less money on the actual item, frauds may ship 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 plate instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn rather inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most common outcome when ordering from pages like Factorysalestore.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scam sites are not going to exist for a long time, scams are not wasting time creating even a slight visibility of legitimacy.

Factorysalestore.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Factorysalestore.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 huge amounts of promotions on social media, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say the same things as the websites 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 benevolent, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become particularly persuasive 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 users are on the website, deceivers 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 strange 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 tricksters 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 individuals know about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving fraudsters with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Factorysalestore.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, rascals 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 purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with feedback. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack user feedback shortly after the start, since there were not many customers 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 offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or drivel reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on scam 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% discounts are not trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, deceptive 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 sane limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes dishonest websites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud 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 have no contact info at all.

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 great possibility that these emails and numbers will be dead silent to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your inquiry.

As frauds tend to reuse numbers and emails for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a different site, 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 lot of benign services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. All of them though have the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. 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 ask for payments in crypto, which feature even less control. 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 rascals are unlikely to have any goods on hand, they are not able to shoot unique pictures. Thus their option is to steal these images from other websites. When scammers sell identical items on different websites, you can find same images on similarly-looking scam 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

Frauds do not steal only pics. As rascals may use the same topic repeatedly, they use the same site design under the new URL, 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 makes uncovering such scams particularly easy, but crooks who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are cases when Factorysalestore.com site, together with similar scam sites, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are malware types known for such behavior. If you see excessive ads appearing in your browser, see your search queries going into a different search engine and some random pages open time to time, scan your computer with GridinSoft Anti-Malware. This will help you to get rid of annoying promotions and scam sites.

Remove malware with Gridinsoft Anti-Malware

We have also been using this software on our systems ever since, and it has always been successful in detecting viruses. It has blocked the most common adware as shown from our tests with the software, and we assure you that it can remove malware as well as other malware hiding on your computer.

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Frequently Asked Questions about the Factorysalestore.com Scam