Flashabsale.com Scam Store: What You Need To Know

Flashabsale.com is a scam website that offers to buy clothes at extremely low prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a narrative to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. Upon placing an order on this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will highlight the red flags regarding the Flashabsale.com site, the way this scam operates, and teach how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.

Flashabsale.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Flashabsale.com may initially look like a genuine discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a brief analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Unfair advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, absence of customer support and customer feedback – this site completes the scam bingo right away.

Flashabsale.com Scam

By purchasing items on websites like Flashabsale.com, it is doubtful that you will get the items you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 scenarios common 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 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 sites that offer baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the deal look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the actual item, rascals may ship a accidental item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a branded one, a dented aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn quite inventive in that case.

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

Flashabsale.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Flashabsale.com runs a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post massive amounts of marketing 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms benevolent, 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 mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once individuals are on the site, scammers do their best to make the consumers 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 customers 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, 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 deceivers, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.

Step 3 – Vanish. Once crooks get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user feedback about the site being fraudulent, they simply disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers know about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving cheats with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Flashabsale.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the scam 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 online reputation with feedback. Obviously, even legit shopping sites will lack user feedback when they have just started, as there were just 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 unrealistic reviews that have nothing to do with what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or gibberish reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on dishonest 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, fraudulent sites 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 sell-off has its sane limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes scam sites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the clients, 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 contact info at all.

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

When they offer a contact email, or even a phone number to contact them, there is a huge possibility that these emails and numbers will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your inquiry.

As frauds tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, 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 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 genuine shops and services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. Each of the latter has the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what attracts scammers – once you paid for the order, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some websites may also offer payments in cryptocurrency, which feature even less control. While crypto payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different frauds.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As frauds are unlikely to have any real items on hand, they cannot make unique pictures. Thus their option is to steal these images elsewhere. When scams offer the same items on different websites, you can find such pics on similarly-designed scam pages. 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 frauds may scam people on the same topic repeatedly, 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 on Google advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the copy of the page you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such frauds particularly easy, but criminals who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are cases when Flashabsale.com site, along with similar scam pages, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are two particular malware types known for such behavior. If you see excessive ads appearing in your web browser, see your search queries going in a different search engine and some random pages open time to time, consider scanning your system 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.

To use Gridinsoft for remove malicious threats, follow the steps below:

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3.Follow the installation setup wizard's instructions diligently.

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Be patient, as the scan duration depends on the number of files and your computer's hardware capabilities. Use this time to relax or attend to other tasks.

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Frequently Asked Questions about the Flashabsale.com Scam