Is Recoutlet.store Legit or a Ripoff? Our In-Depth Investigation

Recoutlet.store is a scam website that offers to buy flowers 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 about this site as a legitimate one. After ordering goods from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will highlight the concerning indicators regarding the Recoutlet.store store, the way this fraud operates, and explain how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in upcoming times.

Recoutlet.store Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Recoutlet.store may initially seem like a authentic discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of user support and customer testimonials – this site accomplishes the scam bingo right away.

Recoutlet.store Scam

By purchasing on sites like Recoutlet.store, it is improbable that you will acquire the items you’ve ordered. More commonly, it results in one of 3 instances characteristic 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 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 particularly often case when ordering from websites that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the purchase look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the actual item, scammers may send a accidental item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a branded one, a dented aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn really inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most typical case when ordering from sites like Recoutlet.store. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply disappear. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, scams do not bother themselves with creating even a remote semblance of legitimacy.

Recoutlet.store scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Recoutlet.store 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. Scammers post massive 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 benign, 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 customers are on the site, scammers 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 individuals stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a unusual manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, fraudsters 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 tricksters get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user feedback regarding the site being fraudulent, they just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people know about the dishonest activity, the profits will dry up, leaving crooks with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Recoutlet.store a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the scam site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is deceptive 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

Hoax sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any reputation with feedback. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack buyer opinions shortly after the start, as there were only a few buyers yet. For that reason, this sign is not stand-alone and must be confirmed with other signs or indicators.

Definitely not generic comments generated by AI

However, once you face phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or nonsense reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on dishonest sites 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% reductions are not viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, dishonest websites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be ludicrous, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold at a low price, but every discount has its logical limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes fraudulent websites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to rip off 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 likely 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 number to contact them, there is a great chance that these numbers and emails will be dead silent to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.

As scammers tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they appear 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 a whole lot of genuine services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. All of them though have 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 paid for the order, nothing will help you to get the money back.

Some sites may also offer payments in crypto, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scammers.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As fraudsters most likely don’t have any real items on hand, they are not able to make unique pics. Thus their only option is to hijack these images elsewhere. When scams offer the same items on different websites, you can find such pics on similarly-designed fraudulent pages. By reverse image searching 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 frauds may parasite on the same topic again and again, they use the same web 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 copy of the original site. It allows you to unveil such scams particularly easy, but criminals who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Recoutlet.store Scam