Is Goodmaterialshop.com A Scam? The Hard Facts You Need To Know

Goodmaterialshop.com is a fraudulent website that offers to purchase plants at extremely low 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 about this site as a legitimate one. 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 show the concerning indicators regarding the Goodmaterialshop.com store, the way this scam operates, and show how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in upcoming times.

Goodmaterialshop.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Goodmaterialshop.com may initially seem like a genuine 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 dishonesty. Unfair advertising methods, excessively low prices, absence of user support and customer reviews – this site accomplishes the scam bingo right away.

Goodmaterialshop.com Scam

By shopping on sites like Goodmaterialshop.com, it is questionable that you will get 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 fraudulent items of popular brands, the characteristic 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 common 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, cheats may send a random item they have on hand instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a new one, a dented aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn quite inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most typical situation when ordering from pages like Goodmaterialshop.com. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely disappear. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, scammers do not bother themselves with creating even a vague visibility of legitimacy.

Goodmaterialshop.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Goodmaterialshop.com runs 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 advertisements 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms benevolent, they do not doubt 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 customers are on the site, fraudsters do their best to make the individuals 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 peculiar manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, fraudsters 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 rascals get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user feedback about the site being fraudulent, they just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals know about the dishonest activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving swindlers with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Goodmaterialshop.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 untrustworthy 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

Fraud websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack buyer opinions when they have just started, as there were not many 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, when you face phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any vague or gibberish reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on dishonest 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, dishonest websites have the initial price low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be preposterous, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold at a low price, but every sell-off has its sane limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes dishonest sites from the benign 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 likely have no support contacts whatsoever.

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

When they offer a contact email, or even a phone to reach them out, there is a great chance that these contacts will be dead silent to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

As scoundrels tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a totally different site, be sure you are 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 not a guarantee, as there are a whole lot of trustworthy shops and services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. All of them though have 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’ve sent the money, nothing will help you to get the money back.

Some sites may also ask for payments in cryptocurrency, which feature even less control. While cryptocurrency payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scammers.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scammers most likely don’t have any goods, they cannot create unique images. Thus their option is simply to steal these images elsewhere. When scams sell identical items on different sites, you can find such images on similarly-looking fraudulent 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 rascals may scam people on the same topic again and again, they use the same web design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search on Google advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the identical copy of the page you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such scams 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 Goodmaterialshop.com Scam