Seafollyonline.shop Scam Store: What You Need To Know

Seafollyonline.shop is a scam website that offers to buy items 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 narrative to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. Upon ordering from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will highlight the red flags regarding the Seafollyonline.shop site, the way this scam operates, and explain how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in future.

Seafollyonline.shop Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Seafollyonline.shop may initially look like a genuine 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 fraudulence. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of customer support and customer feedback – this site completes the fraud bingo right away.

Seafollyonline.shop Scam

By purchasing items on sites like Seafollyonline.shop, it is doubtful that you will get the goods you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 scenarios 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 quality 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 notably common case when ordering from pages that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the deal look real, but spend even less money on the actual item, cheats may send a accidental item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a new one, a dirty aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn rather inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most frequent outcome when ordering goods from websites like Seafollyonline.shop. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply disappear. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, rascals are not wasting effort creating even a vague semblance of legitimacy.

Seafollyonline.shop scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Seafollyonline.shop runs 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 abundant 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 regard ads on the mentioned platforms legitimate, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become particularly 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 consumers are on the site, deceivers do their best to make the consumers buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discounts, free delivery, 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 strange 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 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 individuals know about the deceptive activity, the profits will dry up, leaving swindlers with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Seafollyonline.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, 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 websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with feedback. Obviously, even legit shopping sites will lack buyer opinions shortly after the start, since there were not many clients 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 blurred or absurdity reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on scam 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% reductions are not trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, fraudulent sites 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 logical limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes scam websites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the buyers, 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 likely have no contact info at all.

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

When they offer an email, or even a phone number to contact them, there is a huge chance that these numbers and emails will be unresponsive to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.

As scammers often reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned on a totally 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 not a guarantee, as there are a lot of genuine shops and services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. 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 attracts scammers – once you’ve sent the money, nothing will help you 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 scams.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scams are unlikely to have any real items, they cannot create unique pictures. Thus their only option is simply to steal these images elsewhere. When crooks market the same items on different sites, you can find same images on similarly-designed scam 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

Frauds do not copy only photos. 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 site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search on Google advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the site you’ve started on. It allows you to uncover such frauds pretty easy, but criminals who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Seafollyonline.shop Scam