Pandahiphops.com Scam Store: A Fake PandaHipHop Website

Pandahiphops.com is a scam website that offers to buy various clothing from PandaHipHop at exceptionally cheap 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 this site is legitimate. After placing an order on this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will show the warning signs regarding the Pandahiphops.com site, the way this fraud operates, and teach how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in upcoming times.

Pandahiphops.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Pandahiphops.com may initially seem like a authentic discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a brief analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Unfair advertising methods, excessively low prices, absence of customer support and user feedback – this site fulfills the scam bingo right away.

Pandahiphops.com Scam

By shopping on sites like Pandahiphops.com, it is improbable that you will acquire the items you’ve ordered. More commonly, it results in one of 3 scenarios 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 characteristic 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 common case when ordering from sites that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the trade look real, but spend even less money on the delivered item, rascals may ship a incidental item they have on hand instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a branded one, a dented aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn rather inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most frequent situation when ordering items from websites like Pandahiphops.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scam sites are not going to exist for a long time, frauds do not bother themselves with creating even a slight visibility of legitimacy.

Pandahiphops.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Pandahiphops.com follows a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It usually consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post massive amounts of advertisements 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms benign, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become especially convincing 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 users are on the site, swindlers do their best to make the consumers buy something. Impossibly good 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 individuals 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, 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 tricksters, “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 feedback regarding the site being a scam, they just disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals know about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving swindlers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Pandahiphops.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 fraudulent 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 sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any reputation with reviews. Obviously, even legit shopping sites will lack buyer opinions when they have just started, as there were only a few clients 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 no relation to what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or gibberish reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on deceptive 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 viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, deceptive websites have the initial price 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 sensible limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes deceptive sites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the clients, 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 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 to reach them out, there is a huge possibility that these contacts will be unresponsive to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.

As scoundrels tend to reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a 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 services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. Each of the latter has 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 paid for the order, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some websites may also offer payments in crypto, which feature even less control. While cryptocurrency transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different frauds.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As frauds most likely don’t have any real items, they cannot shoot unique images. Thus their option is simply to hijack these images from other sites. When rascals sell the same items on different sites, you can find same images on similarly-looking fraudulent pages. By reverse image searching 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

Rascals do not stop on stealing pics. As rascals may parasite on the same topic again and again, they use the same web 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 copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such scams particularly easy, but scoundrels who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are cases when Pandahiphops.com site, along with similar scam pages, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are two particular malware types known for such behavior. If you see excessive ads appearing in your web browser, have your search inquiries going in an unusual search engine and some random pages open time to time, consider scanning your computer with GridinSoft Anti-Malware. This will help you to get rid of annoying promotions and scam sites.

Remove malware with Gridinsoft Anti-Malware

We have also been using this software on our systems ever since, and it has always been successful in detecting viruses. It has blocked the most common adware as shown from our tests with the software, and we assure you that it can remove malware as well as other malware hiding on your computer.

To use Gridinsoft for remove malicious threats, follow the steps below:

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Frequently Asked Questions about the Pandahiphops.com Scam