Simople.life is a scam website that offers to purchase items at unusually discounted 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 ordering from 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 Simople.life store, the way this scam operates, and show how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in future.
Simople.life Site – Scam Overview
As I said, Simople.life may initially seem like a genuine discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s deception. Unfair advertising methods, excessively low prices, absence of user support and customer feedback – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.
| Website | Simople.life |
| Hosting | AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc. United States, San Francisco |
| IP Address | 104.19.164.107 |
| Threat Type | Scam/Fraud |
| Scam Type | Fraudulent/Scam online shop |
Simople.life Scam
By purchasing on sites like Simople.life, it is doubtful that you will acquire the goods you’ve ordered. More typically, 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 fraudulent items of popular brands, the characteristic 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 particularly often case when ordering from sites that sell baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.
Wrong item. To make the deal look real, but spend even less money on the delivered item, scammers may send a incidental item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a branded one, a dented aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn really inventive in that case.
Nothing at all. This is the most common scenario when ordering goods from websites like Simople.life. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely disappear. As scam sites are not going to exist for a long time, scams are not wasting time creating even a slight semblance of legitimacy.
Simople.life scam – How does it work?
As any fraud, Simople.life 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. Frauds post huge amounts of marketing on online platforms, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say the same things as their sites 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 especially 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 users are on the website, tricksters do their best to make the customers buy something. Impossibly good 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 consumers 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 rascals get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user reports about the site being a scam, they simply disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people know about the dishonest activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving scammers with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.
Why is Simople.life 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
Fraud websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any online reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack buyer opinions shortly after the start, since there were only a few buyers 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 phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any vague or absurdity reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on dishonest websites 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% discounts are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, scam websites 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 at a low price, but every sell-off has its rational limits.
3. No customer support.
That factor distinguishes scam websites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to rip off 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 whatsoever.
Typically for fraudulent websites, the “About us” column is completely empty
When they offer a contact email, or even a phone to contact them, there is a great chance that these numbers and emails will be dead silent to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your inquiry.
As frauds often reuse numbers and emails for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a different website, 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 complementary, as there are a whole lot of genuine services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. 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, there’s no way to get the money back.
Some websites may also ask for payments in cryptocurrency, which feature even less control. While cryptocurrency payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different fraudsters.
5. Items’ images are sourced from another page
As scams most likely don’t have any goods on hand, they cannot create unique pictures. Thus their option is simply to hijack these images elsewhere. When scams sell the same goods on different websites, you can find same pics on similarly-designed scam pages. By searching for the image 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
Scammers do not steal only pictures. As frauds may use the same topic again and again, they reuse the same site design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search on Google advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the copy of the original site. It allows you to unveil such scams pretty easy, but crooks who run them never aim at cautious users.
Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design
