Old-fashionedes.online Fraud Warning: Don’t Fall for Their Deceptive Tactics

Old-fashionedes.online is a fraudulent website that offers to buy ceramics and glassware at extremely low 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. 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 demonstrate the red flags regarding the Old-fashionedes.online store, the way this fraud operates, and explain how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in upcoming times.

Old-fashionedes.online Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Old-fashionedes.online may initially look like a genuine discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Questionable advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, lack of user support and customer feedback – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.

Old-fashionedes.online Scam

By purchasing items on sites like Old-fashionedes.online, it is questionable that you will get 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 fraudulent items of popular brands, the grade 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 common case when ordering from pages that offer baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the transaction look legit, but spend even less money on the actual item, scammers may send a random item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a branded one, a scratched aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn rather inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most usual outcome when ordering from pages like Old-fashionedes.online. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scam sites do not aim to exist for a long time, fraudsters do not bother themselves with creating even a remote visibility of legitimacy.

Old-fashionedes.online scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Old-fashionedes.online 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 huge amounts of advertisements on online platforms, 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 regard ads on the mentioned platforms genuine, 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 customers are on the site, tricksters do their best to make the users 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 consumers 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, tricksters 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 reports regarding the site being a scam, they simply vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals are aware about the dishonest activity, the profits will dry up, leaving fraudsters with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Old-fashionedes.online a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the fraud site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is fraudulent 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 online shopping sites will lack user feedback shortly after the start, since 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 phishy-looking reviews that have nothing to do with what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any blurred or gibberish 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% markdowns are not viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, dishonest 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 reasonable limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes dishonest sites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the customers, there’s no need to bother about 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 whatsoever.

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

When they offer an email, or even a phone to contact them, there is a great chance that these numbers and emails will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some 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 are mentioned on a different site, be sure you are facing a blatant scam.

A chain of scam sites that use the same “support email”

4. Payments via payment systems that does not support refunds

This scam indicator is complementary, as there are a whole lot of genuine shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. Each of the latter has the same feature 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 ask for payments in crypto, 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 scams most likely don’t have any items, they cannot shoot unique images. Thus their option is to hijack these images elsewhere. When crooks market the same goods on different sites, you can find such 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

This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As rascals may use the same topic again and again, they put the same site design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search on Google advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the original site. It allows you to uncover such scams particularly easy, but scammers who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are cases when Old-fashionedes.online website, together with similar scam pages, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are malware types known for such behavior. If you see excessive ads in your web browser, see your search queries going in an unusual search engine and some random pages open time to time, consider scanning your device with GridinSoft Anti-Malware. This will help you to get rid of annoying promotions and scam sites.

Remove malware with Gridinsoft Anti-Malware

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Frequently Asked Questions about the Old-fashionedes.online Scam