Sportgoodssale.com Scam Alert: Beware of Counterfeit Products and More

Sportgoodssale.com is a deceptive website that offers to purchase decorative flowers at extremely low 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 this site is legitimate. After placing an order on this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

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

Sportgoodssale.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Sportgoodssale.com may initially look like a authentic discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Unfair advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of customer support and user feedback – this site completes the scam bingo right away.

Sportgoodssale.com Scam

By purchasing items on sites like Sportgoodssale.com, it is improbable that you will get the goods you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 cases typical 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 attribute will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may inform about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a specifically frequent case when ordering from sites that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the deal look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the delivered item, rascals may send a incidental item they have on hand instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a scratched aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn quite inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most typical case when ordering goods from websites like Sportgoodssale.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply disappear. As scam websites are not going to exist for a long time, frauds are not wasting time creating even a slight visibility of legitimacy.

Sportgoodssale.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Sportgoodssale.com runs a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It usually consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post massive amounts of advertisements 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms legitimate, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become particularly convincing 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 customers are on the website, scammers do their best to make the users buy something. Impossibly good 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 customers 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 deceivers, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.

Step 3 – Vanish. Once scoundrels get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user reports about the site being fraudulent, they just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals are aware about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving scammers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Sportgoodssale.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 deceptive without risking your money. Fortunately, scams 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 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 just a few clients 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, 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 nonsense reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on scam websites 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% markdowns are not viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, dishonest 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 for cheap, but every sell-off has its sensible limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes dishonest sites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to rip off the buyers, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the page will likely have no support contacts at all.

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 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 as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned on a 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 complementary, as there are a lot of legit 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’ve sent the money, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some websites may also offer payments in cryptocurrency, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While cryptocurrency transactions 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, they are not able to create unique images. Thus their only option is simply to steal these images elsewhere. When scams offer the same items on different websites, you can find same images on similarly-designed scam sites. By searching for the image 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 copy only pics. As rascals may parasite on the same topic again and again, they put the same web design under the new web-address, 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 original site. It allows you to uncover such scams pretty easy, but crooks who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Sportgoodssale.com Scam