Realones.club is a scam website that offers to buy clothes 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 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 highlight the warning signs regarding the Realones.club store, the way this fraud operates, and explain how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in future.
Realones.club Site – Scam Overview
As I said, Realones.club may initially appear like a authentic discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a brief analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s deception. Unfair advertising methods, excessively low prices, absence of user support and user feedback – this site accomplishes the scam bingo right away.
| Website | Realones.club |
| Hosting | AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc. Canada, Ottawa |
| IP Address | 23.227.38.65 |
| Threat Type | Scam/Fraud |
| Scam Type | Fraudulent/Scam online shop |
Realones.club Scam
By shopping on websites like Realones.club, it is doubtful that you will acquire the goods you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 instances typical 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 attribute 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 especially frequent case when ordering from pages that sell baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.
Wrong item. To make the trade look legit, but spend even less money on the delivered item, cheats may send a accidental item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a dented aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn rather inventive in that case.
Absolutely nothing. This is the most frequent outcome when ordering items from pages like Realones.club. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scam sites are not going to exist for a long time, fraudsters do not bother themselves with creating even a vague semblance of legitimacy.
Realones.club scam – How does it work?
As any scam, Realones.club 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 marketing 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 benign, 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 mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.
Step 2 – Take the Money. Once customers are on the website, deceivers do their best to make the customers 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 peculiar 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 scammers, “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 about the site being a scam, they just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals are aware about the deceptive activity, the profits 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 Realones.club a Scam?
Well, we just talked about the way the hoax 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
Hoax websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack customer reviews shortly after the start, as there were not many consumers 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 sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any blurred or gibberish reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on fraudulent 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, dishonest websites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be ridiculous, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold for cheap, but every sell-off has its sane limits.
3. No customer support.
This is what distinguishes fraudulent sites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the clients, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – 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 a contact email, or even a phone number to reach them out, there is a huge possibility that these emails and numbers will be unresponsive to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.
As scoundrels tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned on a totally different site, 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 payment systems like them. Each of the latter has the same feature I’ve already mentioned above: these methods do not suppose any refund options. 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 sites may also ask for payments in cryptocurrency, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different frauds.
5. Items’ images are sourced from another page
As fraudsters are unlikely to have any goods, they are not able to shoot unique pics. Thus their only option is simply to steal these images elsewhere. When rascals offer identical items on different websites, you can find same pics on similarly-looking scam pages. 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
Frauds do not stop on stealing pics. As rascals may scam people on the same topic again and again, they put the same web design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the identical copy of the site you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such scams particularly easy, but criminals who run them never aim at cautious users.
Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design
