Investigating Fidestisan.com: Legit Store or Shady Scam?

Fidestisan.com is a deceptive website that offers to buy items at unusually discounted prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is in fact just a ploy to make you think this site is legitimate. 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 concerning indicators regarding the Fidestisan.com shop, the way this scam operates, and teach how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in upcoming times.

Fidestisan.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Fidestisan.com may initially look like a authentic discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, absence of user support and customer reviews – this site completes the fraud bingo right away.

Fidestisan.com Scam

By purchasing items on sites like Fidestisan.com, it is unlikely 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 imitation items of popular brands, the characteristic 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 notably common case when ordering from sites that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the trade look real, but spend even less money on the actual item, rascals may ship a accidental item they have on hand instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a branded one, a dented aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn really inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most frequent scenario when ordering items from pages like Fidestisan.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scam websites are not going to exist for a long time, scammers are not wasting effort creating even a remote visibility of legitimacy.

Fidestisan.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Fidestisan.com follows a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It usually consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post abundant amounts of promotions on social media, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say 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 doubt 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 users are on the website, swindlers do their best to make the customers buy something. Mind-boggling 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 consumers 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, tricksters 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 swindlers, “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 about the site being fraudulent, they simply 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 fraudsters with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Fidestisan.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 deceptive 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 purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack customer reviews shortly after the start, since there were just 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, once 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 nonsense reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on deceptive sites 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% markdowns are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, fraudulent websites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be absurd, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold at a low price, but every discount has its rational limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes deceptive websites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the buyers, 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 contact info at all.

Typically for fraudulent sites, 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 contacts will be dead silent to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.

As frauds tend to reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a completely different website, be sure you’re facing a blatant scam.

A chain of scam websites 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 trustworthy services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. Each of the latter has the same feature 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 crypto, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scammers.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As rascals are unlikely to have any goods, they are not able to shoot unique pictures. Thus their only option is simply to steal these images from other websites. When crooks market the same items on different sites, you can find such pics on similarly-designed scam pages. 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 scammers may parasite on the same topic again and again, they reuse the same web design under the new address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the copy of the original site. It allows you to unveil such frauds particularly easy, but criminals who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are situations when Fidestisan.com website, along with similar scam sites, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are malware types that aim specifically at such purposes. If you see excessive ads appearing in your web browser, have your search inquiries going in an unusual search engine and some random pages open time to time, consider scanning your PC 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 Fidestisan.com Scam