Investigating Trippinsolo.com: Legit Store or Shady Scam?

Trippinsolo.com is a deceptive website that offers to purchase items at exceptionally cheap 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. Upon 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 highlight the warning signs regarding the Trippinsolo.com site, the way this scam operates, and show how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in upcoming times.

Trippinsolo.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Trippinsolo.com may initially seem like a authentic discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a brief analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s deception. Unfair advertising methods, excessively low prices, absence of user support and user reviews – this site completes the fraud bingo right away.

Trippinsolo.com Scam

By shopping on pages like Trippinsolo.com, it is improbable that you will receive the goods you’ve ordered. More commonly, it results in one of 3 situations characteristic for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to imitation items of popular brands, the standard 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 often case when ordering from sites that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the deal look real, but spend even less money on the delivered item, scammers may ship a incidental item they have instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a branded one, a scratched aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn rather inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most typical outcome when ordering from sites like Trippinsolo.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely vanish. As scam sites are not going to exist for a long time, fraudsters are not wasting time creating even a faint semblance of legitimacy.

Trippinsolo.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Trippinsolo.com runs 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 advertisements on online platforms, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say exactly 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms genuine, 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 individuals are on the site, deceivers do their best to make the consumers buy something. Impossibly good 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 customers stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a unusual 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 tricksters, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.

Step 3 – Vanish. Once rascals get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user reports regarding 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 deceptive activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving crooks with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Trippinsolo.com a Scam?

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

Fraud sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with feedback. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack customer reviews when they have just started, since there were just a few customers 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 unrealistic reviews that have nothing to do with what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any unclear or balderdash reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on scam sites 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% reductions are not viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, dishonest websites have the initial price 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 for cheap, but every discount has its rational limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes dishonest websites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to rip off the customers, there’s no need to bother about answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the page will 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 reach them out, there is a huge possibility that these emails and numbers will be unresponsive to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.

As frauds tend to reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned on a totally 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 not a guarantee, as there are plenty of trustworthy services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. All of them though have the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what makes it so attractive to scammers – once you paid for the order, there’s no way to get the money back.

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

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scammers are unlikely to have any real items on hand, they cannot shoot unique pics. Thus their only option is to hijack these images elsewhere. When crooks market identical goods on different pages, you can find such pics 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

This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As rascals may parasite on the same topic again and again, they put 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 from the previous paragraph may lead you to the identical copy of the site you’ve started on. It allows you to unveil such scams pretty easy, but criminals who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Trippinsolo.com Scam