Is Stanleyus.shop A Scam? The Hard Facts You Need To Know

Stanleyus.shop is a deceptive website that offers to buy various goods at extremely low prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is in fact just a ploy to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. Upon 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 show the red flags regarding the Stanleyus.shop store, the way this deception operates, and explain how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in future.

Stanleyus.shop Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Stanleyus.shop may initially look like a legit discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of customer support and user reviews – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.

Stanleyus.shop Scam

By purchasing on sites like Stanleyus.shop, it is doubtful that you will receive the goods you’ve ordered. More commonly, 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 notify about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a especially often case when ordering from sites that offer baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the deal look real, but spend even less money on the actual item, rascals may send a accidental item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a branded one, a dirty aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn quite inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most typical situation when ordering from sites like Stanleyus.shop. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scam websites do not aim to exist for a long time, fraudsters do not bother themselves with creating even a faint visibility of legitimacy.

Stanleyus.shop scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Stanleyus.shop runs a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post abundant 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 consider ads on the mentioned platforms legitimate, they do not doubt 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 mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once consumers are on the site, swindlers 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, 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 tricksters, “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 reports about the site being a scam, they just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals know about the deceptive activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving swindlers with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Stanleyus.shop a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the fraud 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

Hoax websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack consumer comments when they have just started, as there were just a few consumers 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 unrealistic reviews that have no relation to what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any indistinct or gibberish 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% reductions are not trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, dishonest sites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be absurd, 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 sensible limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes dishonest sites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the customers, 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 likely have no contact info at all.

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 huge 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 scoundrels tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a different site, 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 not a guarantee, as there are plenty of benign services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. 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, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some sites may also ask for payments in cryptocurrency, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scams.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scams most likely don’t have any items on hand, they are not able to create unique pics. Thus their only option is to hijack these images from other websites. When frauds market the same items on different sites, you can find same images 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

Scammers do not copy only pictures. As frauds may use the same topic again and again, they put the same site design under the new address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such frauds particularly easy, but crooks who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are situations when Stanleyus.shop website, along with similar scam sites, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are two particular malware types that aim specifically at such purposes. If you notice excessive amounts of ads in your web browser, see your search inquiries going into an unusual search engine and some random pages open time to time, scan your computer 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 Stanleyus.shop Scam