Mallbuysgo.com Scam Review: Protect Yourself from Online Fraud

Mallbuysgo.com is a fraudulent website that offers to buy women clothing at unusually discounted prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a story to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon ordering goods 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 warning signs regarding the Mallbuysgo.com store, the way this deception operates, and show how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.

Mallbuysgo.com Site – Scam Overview

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

Mallbuysgo.com Scam

By shopping on sites like Mallbuysgo.com, it is improbable that you will obtain the items 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 imitation items of popular brands, the standard will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may notify about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a especially frequent case when ordering from sites that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

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

Absolutely nothing. This is the most usual situation when ordering from sites like Mallbuysgo.com. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely disappear. As scam sites are not going to exist for a long time, scams are not wasting time creating even a vague semblance of legitimacy.

Mallbuysgo.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Mallbuysgo.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 massive amounts of marketing on online platforms, 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 consider ads on the mentioned platforms benevolent, they do not suspect 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 individuals are on the site, tricksters do their best to make the consumers buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discount promo codes, free delivery, bright and blinking “Order Now” buttons that are just everywhere – they use every single method possible. And this works out – uninformed users 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, swindlers 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 swindlers get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints 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 people are aware about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving fraudsters with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Mallbuysgo.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the fraud site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is untrustworthy without risking your money. Fortunately, rascals 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 purpose (and way) to make any reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even legit shopping sites will lack customer reviews shortly after the start, since there were just a few patrons 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 unrealistic reviews that have no relation to what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any blurred or nonsense 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. 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 have the initial price 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 for cheap, but every discount has its logical limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes fraudulent websites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the buyers, there’s no need to bother about answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the page will most likely have no contact info whatsoever.

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

When they offer an email, or even a phone number to contact them, 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 scoundrels often reuse numbers and emails for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned on a totally different website, 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 complementary, as there are plenty of benign shops and services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. All of them though have the same feature I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what makes it so attractive to scammers – once you’ve sent the money, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some websites may also ask for payments in cryptocurrency, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While cryptocurrency transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different rascals.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As frauds are unlikely to have any goods, they are not able to create unique images. Thus their option is simply to steal these images from other websites. When scammers market the same goods on different sites, you can find such images on similarly-designed 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 scammers may use the same topic again and again, they use the same site design under the new URL, 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 copy of the site you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such scams pretty easy, but scammers who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Mallbuysgo.com Scam