Is Opren.shop A Scam? The Hard Facts You Need To Know

Opren.shop is a deceptive website that offers to buy various clothing at unusually discounted 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 this site is legitimate. After ordering from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will demonstrate the red flags regarding the Opren.shop site, the way this scam operates, and explain how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.

Opren.shop Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Opren.shop may initially look like a authentic discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Unfair advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, absence of user support and customer testimonials – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.

Opren.shop Scam

By purchasing items on websites like Opren.shop, it is improbable that you will get the goods you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 instances common 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 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 particularly common case when ordering from pages that sell baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the purchase look real, but spend even less money on the actual item, rascals may ship a accidental item they have on hand instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a new one, a dirty aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn really inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most usual outcome when ordering from websites like Opren.shop. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, frauds do not bother themselves with creating even a vague visibility of legitimacy.

Opren.shop scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Opren.shop follows a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It usually consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds 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 compelling during major events that boost people’s interest in shopping, like Halloween, Black Friday, Christmas, etc. Sometimes, they mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once consumers are on the site, tricksters do their best to make the individuals buy something. Impossibly good deals, additional discount promo codes, free shipping, 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, 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 swindlers, “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 grievances and user reports regarding the site being fraudulent, they just disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers are aware about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving cheats with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Opren.shop 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, fraudsters 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

Scam sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with reviews. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack client testimonials when they have just started, as there were only a few customers 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 phishy-looking reviews that have nothing to do with what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any indistinct or balderdash reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on dishonest websites 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 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 for cheap, but every discount has its sane limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes deceptive websites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to rip off the clients, 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 most likely 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 numbers and emails will be dead silent to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your inquiry.

As scoundrels tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a different site, be sure that this is 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 services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. 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, nothing will help you 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 payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scams.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scams are unlikely to have any real items on hand, they cannot shoot unique pictures. Thus their option is to steal these images from other sites. When scammers market the same goods on different websites, you can find same pics on similarly-designed scam 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 put the same site design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such frauds pretty easy, but scoundrels who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Opren.shop Scam