Trendy-trunk.shop Scam Alert: Beware of Counterfeit Products and More

Trendy-trunk.shop is a fraudulent website that offers to buy clothes at extremely low prices. It may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is actually just a story to make you think this site is legitimate. After 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 concerning indicators regarding the Trendy-trunk.shop shop, the way this deception operates, and show how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in future.

Trendy-trunk.shop Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Trendy-trunk.shop may initially appear like a legit discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Questionable advertising methods, extremely low prices, lack of customer support and user reviews – this site completes the scam bingo right away.

Trendy-trunk.shop Scam

By purchasing items on pages like Trendy-trunk.shop, it is improbable that you will receive the items you’ve ordered. More commonly, it results in one of 3 instances common 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 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 particularly frequent case when ordering from websites that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the deal look legit, but spend even less money on the delivered item, rascals may send a random item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a branded one, a dented aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn quite inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most typical situation when ordering from sites like Trendy-trunk.shop. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely vanish. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, fraudsters are not wasting time creating even a slight semblance of legitimacy.

Trendy-trunk.shop scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Trendy-trunk.shop 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. Scammers post huge amounts of marketing on social media, 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 regard ads on the mentioned platforms legitimate, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become especially persuasive 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, deceivers do their best to make the consumers 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 customers stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a curious 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 deceivers, “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 regarding the site being a scam, they simply vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people know about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving scammers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Trendy-trunk.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, 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 reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack client testimonials when they have just started, as there were just a few 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, once you face unrealistic reviews that have no relation to what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any vague or balderdash reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on dishonest 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 trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, deceptive 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 at a low price, but every discount has its sensible limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes deceptive websites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the buyers, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the site will likely have no contact info whatsoever.

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

When they offer a contact email, or even a phone number to contact them, there is a great possibility that these contacts will be unresponsive to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your inquiry.

As scoundrels tend to reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a completely different site, be sure you’re 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 genuine 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: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what attracts scammers – once you paid for the order, nothing will help you to get the money back.

Some sites may also ask for payments in crypto, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. 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 fraudsters most likely don’t have any real items, they are not able to create unique images. Thus their option is to hijack these images elsewhere. When rascals sell the same items on different pages, you can find such pics on similarly-designed scam pages. By reverse image searching 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 copy only pictures. As rascals may use the same topic repeatedly, they reuse the same web design under the new URL, 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 allows you to uncover such scams particularly easy, but scoundrels who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Trendy-trunk.shop Scam