Mellycharm.com Scam Store: A Fake Online Shop

Mellycharm.com is a fraudulent website that offers to buy clothes 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 story to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon placing an order on this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will show the concerning indicators regarding the Mellycharm.com site, the way this scam operates, and show how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in future.

Mellycharm.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Mellycharm.com may initially appear like a genuine discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a brief analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s deception. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, absence of customer support and customer reviews – this site completes the fraud bingo right away.

Mellycharm.com Scam

By purchasing items on pages like Mellycharm.com, it is doubtful that you will obtain the goods you’ve ordered. More typically, 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 counterfeit 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 particularly often case when ordering from websites that sell baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

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

Absolutely nothing. This is the most typical outcome when ordering goods from sites like Mellycharm.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely disappear. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, fraudsters do not bother themselves with creating even a faint visibility of legitimacy.

Mellycharm.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Mellycharm.com runs a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It commonly 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 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms benevolent, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become particularly compelling 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, fraudsters do their best to make the individuals 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, 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 swindlers get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user feedback regarding the site being fraudulent, they simply vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers know about the deceptive activity, the profits will dry up, leaving swindlers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Mellycharm.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

Hoax sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any online reputation with feedback. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack consumer comments when they have just started, as there were only 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, when you face unrealistic reviews that have nothing to do with what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any indistinct or absurdity reviews that may describe any item sold on the website 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% discounts are not viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, dishonest sites set the prices 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 for cheap, but every sell-off has its reasonable 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 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 site will most likely have no contact info at all.

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

When they offer an email, or even a phone to contact them, there is a huge possibility that these contacts will be dead silent to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your inquiry.

As scammers often reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a different website, be sure you’re 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 plenty of genuine services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. All of them though have the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what attracts scammers – once you’ve sent the money, nothing will help you to get the money back.

Some websites may also offer 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 items, they cannot create unique pictures. Thus their only option is simply to steal these images elsewhere. When scams offer identical items on different sites, you can find same pics on similarly-designed scam 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

Rascals do not stop on stealing pics. As frauds may parasite on the same topic again and again, they use the same site design under the new address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search on Google advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the identical copy of the site you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such frauds pretty easy, but criminals who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Mellycharm.com Scam