Sowomega.shop Review: A Fake Store You Should Avoid

Sowomega.shop is a fraudulent website that offers to purchase items at extremely low prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a ploy to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. After ordering goods from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will show the concerning indicators regarding the Sowomega.shop store, the way this fraud operates, and explain how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in future.

Sowomega.shop Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Sowomega.shop may initially seem like a genuine discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Questionable advertising methods, extremely low prices, lack of user support and customer feedback – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.

Sowomega.shop Scam

By purchasing on websites like Sowomega.shop, it is unlikely that you will acquire the items you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 scenarios typical for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to counterfeit items of popular brands, the quality 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 common case when ordering from websites that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the trade look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the delivered item, cheats may ship a accidental item they have instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a dirty aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn really inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most common case when ordering goods from websites like Sowomega.shop. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, fraudsters are not wasting time creating even a slight visibility of legitimacy.

Sowomega.shop scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Sowomega.shop runs a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It usually consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post massive 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 consider ads on the mentioned platforms genuine, they do not doubt 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 customers are on the site, deceivers do their best to make the customers buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discount promo codes, free delivery, bright and blinking “Order Now” buttons that are just everywhere – they use every single method possible. And this works out – uninformed individuals 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, tricksters 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 tricksters get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user feedback about the site being fraudulent, they just disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers know about the deceptive activity, the profits 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 Sowomega.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 fraudulent 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 sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack customer reviews shortly after the start, as there were not many 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 nothing to do with what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or gibberish reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on fraudulent 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% reductions are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, scam 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 sane limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes deceptive websites 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 (if it is present at all) – the site will 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 number to contact them, there is a great possibility that these numbers and emails will be dead silent to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.

As frauds often reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a different website, 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 shops and services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. Each of the latter has the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: these methods do not suppose any refund options. And this is what makes it so attractive to scammers – once you’ve sent the money, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some websites may also offer payments in crypto, which feature even less control. While cryptocurrency transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scammers.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As rascals most likely don’t have any goods, they are not able to shoot unique pics. Thus their only option is simply to hijack these images from other websites. When scammers offer identical goods on different websites, you can find same pics 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 stop on stealing photos. As frauds may parasite on the same topic repeatedly, they reuse the same web design under the new URL, 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 allows you to unveil 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 Sowomega.shop Scam