Snapraven.com Scam Store: What You Need To Know

Snapraven.com is a scam 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 story to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon ordering goods from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will show the red flags regarding the Snapraven.com site, the way this deception operates, and explain how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in future.

Snapraven.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Snapraven.com may initially look like a legit 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 fraudulence. Unfair advertising methods, extremely low prices, lack of customer support and customer testimonials – this site completes the scam bingo right away.

Snapraven.com Scam

By shopping on pages like Snapraven.com, it is doubtful that you will acquire the items you’ve ordered. More commonly, it results in one of 3 scenarios standard 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 standard 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 common case when ordering from sites that offer baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the purchase look legit, but spend even less money on the delivered item, scammers may send a random item they have instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a scratched aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn really inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most common outcome when ordering from sites like Snapraven.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scam sites are not going to exist for a long time, scammers are not wasting time creating even a slight sight of legitimacy.

Snapraven.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Snapraven.com follows a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post huge amounts of advertisements on social media, 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 consider ads on the mentioned platforms genuine, 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 mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once users are on the website, scammers do their best to make the customers buy something. Impossibly good 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 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, 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 a scam, they just 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 money flow will dry up, leaving cheats with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Snapraven.com 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, frauds 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 purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with feedback. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack buyer opinions shortly after the start, since there were only a few patrons 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 offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or absurdity 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% reductions are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, dishonest 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 at a low price, but every discount has its rational limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes fraudulent websites from the legit 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 have no contact info whatsoever.

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 great chance that these numbers and emails will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

As scoundrels tend to reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned on a completely different site, be sure you are facing 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 benign services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. All of them though have the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: these methods do not suppose any refund options. 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 feature even less control. While crypto transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different rascals.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As frauds are unlikely to have any real items on hand, they are not able to shoot unique pictures. Thus their only option is simply to hijack these images from other sites. When scams market identical goods on different websites, you can find such images on similarly-looking 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

This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As rascals may parasite on the same topic again and again, they reuse the same site design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such frauds pretty easy, but criminals who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are cases when Snapraven.com website, along with similar scam pages, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are malware types known for such behavior. If you notice excessive amounts of ads appearing in your web browser, have your search queries redirected in an unusual search engine and some random pages open time to time, consider scanning your device with GridinSoft Anti-Malware. This will help you to get rid of annoying promotions and scam sites.

Remove malware with Gridinsoft Anti-Malware

We have also been using this software on our systems ever since, and it has always been successful in detecting viruses. It has blocked the most common adware as shown from our tests with the software, and we assure you that it can remove malware as well as other malware hiding on your computer.

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Frequently Asked Questions about the Snapraven.com Scam