We Looked Into Souproad.com: Scam or Legit? The Verdict

Souproad.com is a deceptive website that offers to purchase jigsaw puzzles at exceptionally cheap prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is in fact just a story to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon ordering from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

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

Souproad.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Souproad.com may initially appear like a authentic discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Questionable advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, lack of user support and customer feedback – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.

Souproad.com Scam

By purchasing on websites like Souproad.com, it is doubtful that you will acquire the items you’ve ordered. More often, it results in one of 3 situations standard for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to imitation 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 specifically 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 delivered item, frauds may send a accidental item they have on hand instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a scratched aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn really inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most usual scenario when ordering from websites like Souproad.com. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scam sites do not aim to exist for a long time, frauds do not bother themselves with creating even a vague semblance of legitimacy.

Souproad.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Souproad.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 huge amounts of marketing 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 regard ads on the mentioned platforms benign, they do not doubt 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 mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once individuals are on the site, tricksters do their best to make the individuals 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 customers 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, 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 fraudsters, “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 regarding the site being a scam, they simply disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers are aware about the dishonest activity, the profits will dry up, leaving swindlers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Souproad.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

Hoax websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack consumer comments shortly after the start, since there were not many customers 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 unrealistic reviews that have nothing to do with what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or drivel reviews that may describe any item sold on the website 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 trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, fraudulent websites have the initial price 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 for cheap, but every discount has its sensible limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes fraudulent sites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the clients, 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 most likely have no support contacts at all.

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

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

As scoundrels tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a completely 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 trustworthy services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. All of them though have the same feature I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what makes it so attractive to 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 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 fraudsters most likely don’t have any goods on hand, they cannot make unique images. Thus their only option is to hijack these images from other websites. When scams sell identical goods on different sites, you can find such images on similarly-designed scam sites. 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

Frauds do not stop on stealing photos. As frauds may parasite on the same topic repeatedly, they use the same site design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the identical copy of the site you’ve started on. It allows you to uncover such frauds pretty easy, but scammers who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Souproad.com Scam