FL-Outlets.com Review: Avoid Scam Website at All Costs

FL-Outlets.com is a fraudulent website that offers to buy items at unusually discounted prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is actually just a ploy to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon ordering goods from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will highlight the concerning indicators regarding the FL-Outlets.com shop, the way this deception operates, and teach how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.

FL-Outlets.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, FL-Outlets.com may initially seem like a genuine discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s deception. Unfair advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, absence of customer support and user testimonials – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.

FL-Outlets.com Scam

By purchasing items on sites like FL-Outlets.com, it is doubtful that you will acquire the goods you’ve ordered. More commonly, it results in one of 3 situations standard 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 quality 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 specifically common case when ordering from sites that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the trade look real, but spend even less money on the actual item, scammers may send a accidental item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a new one, a scratched aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn really inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most typical situation when ordering items from websites like FL-Outlets.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely vanish. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, frauds do not bother themselves with creating even a faint semblance of legitimacy.

FL-Outlets.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, FL-Outlets.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 huge amounts of marketing on social media, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say exactly 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 regard ads on the mentioned platforms legitimate, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become especially 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 website, deceivers do their best to make the consumers 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 individuals stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a unusual manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, deceivers 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 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 people know about the deceptive activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving cheats with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is FL-Outlets.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 untrustworthy without risking your money. Fortunately, fraudsters 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 user reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack consumer comments shortly after the start, as there were not many consumers 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, once you face phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any blurred or drivel reviews that may describe any item sold on the site 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 viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, deceptive 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 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 scam the customers, 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 page will have no contact info whatsoever.

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 unresponsive to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.

As scammers often reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned 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 plenty of trustworthy shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. 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 ask for payments in crypto, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scammers.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As rascals most likely don’t have any goods on hand, they are not able to make unique pictures. Thus their option is to hijack these images elsewhere. When fraudsters market the same goods on different pages, you can find such pics on similarly-looking fraudulent sites. 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

Scammers do not stop on stealing photos. As rascals may scam people on the same topic again and again, they reuse 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 advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the copy of the page you’ve started on. It makes uncovering 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 FL-Outlets.com Scam