Sedhey.com Review: A Fake Store You Should Avoid

Sedhey.com is a deceptive website that offers to buy items at exceptionally cheap prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a narrative to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. After placing an order on this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will show the red flags regarding the Sedhey.com store, the way this fraud operates, and show how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in future.

Sedhey.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Sedhey.com may initially appear like a genuine discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s deception. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, absence of user support and customer feedback – this site completes the scam bingo right away.

Sedhey.com Scam

By purchasing items on websites like Sedhey.com, it is uncertain that you will obtain the items you’ve ordered. More often, 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 fake items of popular brands, the quality will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may mention about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a specifically often case when ordering from pages that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

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

Absolutely nothing. This is the most common scenario when ordering items from sites like Sedhey.com. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply disappear. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, scams do not bother themselves with creating even a vague sight of legitimacy.

Sedhey.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Sedhey.com 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. Frauds post abundant amounts of marketing 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 benevolent, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become especially persuasive 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, scammers do their best to make the consumers buy something. Mind-boggling 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 unusual manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, deceivers 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 rascals get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user feedback regarding the site being fraudulent, they simply vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers are aware about the fraudulent activity, the profits will dry up, leaving crooks with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Sedhey.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the fraud site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is fraudulent without risking your money. Fortunately, scammers 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 reason (and way) to make any online reputation with feedback. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack client testimonials when they have just started, since there were not many patrons 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 balderdash 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. 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% markdowns are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, fraudulent sites 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.

This is what distinguishes fraudulent 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 – the site will most 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 to contact them, there is a great chance that these emails and numbers will be dead silent to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

As frauds often reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a totally different site, 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 not a guarantee, as there are a lot of legit shops and 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 attracts 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 cryptocurrency transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different rascals.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As fraudsters are unlikely to have any goods, they cannot shoot unique images. Thus their option is to steal these images from other sites. When rascals market identical items on different sites, you can find same pics on similarly-looking scam 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

Frauds do not stop on stealing photos. As frauds may use the same topic repeatedly, they reuse 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 allows you to uncover such frauds pretty easy, but scammers who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Sedhey.com Scam