Maildley.com Review: A Fake Store You Should Avoid

Maildley.com is a deceptive website that offers to purchase items at unusually discounted prices. It 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 about this site as a legitimate one. After 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 demonstrate the red flags regarding the Maildley.com shop, the way this scam operates, and show how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in future.

Maildley.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Maildley.com may initially look like a genuine discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Unfair advertising methods, extremely low prices, lack of customer support and user testimonials – this site fulfills the scam bingo right away.

Maildley.com Scam

By purchasing on pages like Maildley.com, it is improbable that you will get the goods you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 situations characteristic 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 often case when ordering from sites that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the purchase look legit, but spend even less money on the actual item, cheats may send a random item they have instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a new one, a scratched aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn rather inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most common scenario when ordering from pages like Maildley.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely vanish. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, rascals do not bother themselves with creating even a vague sight of legitimacy.

Maildley.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Maildley.com runs a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post abundant amounts of promotions on online platforms, 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms benign, 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 consumers are on the site, deceivers do their best to make the customers buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discounts, free delivery, 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, 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 deceivers, “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 a scam, they simply disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals are aware about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving fraudsters with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Maildley.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, scams 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

Hoax websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any reputation with feedback. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack consumer comments when they have just started, since 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, once you face phishy-looking reviews that have nothing to do with what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any blurred or balderdash reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on fraudulent websites 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 Thanksgiving day. In some cases, scam sites have the initial price low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be ridiculous, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold for cheap, but every sell-off has its logical limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes fraudulent sites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to rip off the customers, there’s no need to bother about answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the site will 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 chance that these emails and numbers will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

As frauds often reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a completely 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 lot of legit services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. Each of the latter has the same pitfall 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 sites may also offer payments in crypto, which feature even less control. While cryptocurrency payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different frauds.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scammers most likely don’t have any goods on hand, they cannot create unique pictures. Thus their option is to hijack these images from other sites. When fraudsters market identical items on different sites, you can find such images on similarly-looking scam pages. 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

Frauds do not steal only pictures. As rascals may use the same topic repeatedly, they put the same site design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical 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

Frequently Asked Questions about the Maildley.com Scam