Storeclosingsale-us.top Scam Store: A Fake Sam Ash Music Website

Storeclosingsale-us.top is a deceptive website that offers to buy guitars from Sam Ash Music at unusually discounted 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. After placing an order on this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will demonstrate the concerning indicators regarding the Storeclosingsale-us.top site, the way this fraud operates, and show how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in future.

Storeclosingsale-us.top Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Storeclosingsale-us.top may initially look like a genuine discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s deception. Questionable advertising methods, extremely low prices, absence of user support and user feedback – this site fulfills the scam bingo right away.

Storeclosingsale-us.top Scam

By shopping on sites like Storeclosingsale-us.top, it is improbable that you will obtain 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 fraudulent items of popular brands, the attribute 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 specifically frequent 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, rascals may send a random item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a dented aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn really inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most frequent situation when ordering goods from sites like Storeclosingsale-us.top. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, rascals are not wasting effort creating even a slight visibility of legitimacy.

Storeclosingsale-us.top scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Storeclosingsale-us.top follows a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It usually consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post massive amounts of marketing on social media, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say exactly 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 regard ads on the mentioned platforms genuine, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become especially 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 customers are on the site, swindlers do their best to make the customers buy something. Mind-boggling 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 users 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, scammers 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 crooks get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user reports regarding the site being fraudulent, they simply vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers know about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving cheats with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Storeclosingsale-us.top a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the hoax site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is fraudulent 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

Scam sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack client testimonials when they have just started, since there were not many consumers 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, when you face unrealistic reviews that have no relation to what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any unclear 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. 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 viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, scam sites have the initial price low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be ridiculous, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold at a low price, but every sell-off has its sane limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes dishonest sites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud 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 page will likely have no support contacts whatsoever.

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

When they offer an email, or even a phone number to reach them out, there is a huge chance 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 often reuse numbers and emails for specifying them as “support”, 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 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 whole lot of trustworthy shops and services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. 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 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 is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scams.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As rascals most likely don’t have any real items, they are not able to create unique pics. Thus their only option is simply to steal these images from other sites. When frauds offer the same goods on different sites, you can find such images on similarly-looking 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 stop on stealing photos. As frauds may use the same topic repeatedly, they use the same web design under the new address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search on Google advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the copy of the site you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such scams pretty easy, but criminals who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Storeclosingsale-us.top Scam