Is Tycokol.com Legit or a Ripoff? Our In-Depth Investigation

Tycokol.com is a scam website that offers to purchase clothes at exceptionally cheap 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 about this site as a legitimate one. After ordering from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will demonstrate the concerning indicators regarding the Tycokol.com shop, the way this deception operates, and show how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in future.

Tycokol.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Tycokol.com may initially seem like a authentic discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, absence of customer support and user reviews – this site completes the scam bingo right away.

Tycokol.com Scam

By purchasing items on websites like Tycokol.com, it is doubtful that you will acquire the items you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 situations common 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 characteristic 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 websites that offer baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the deal look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the actual item, cheats may send a incidental item they have on hand instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a new one, a scratched aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn quite inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most typical outcome when ordering goods from sites like Tycokol.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply disappear. As scam sites are not going to exist for a long time, scammers do not bother themselves with creating even a vague visibility of legitimacy.

Tycokol.com scam – How does it work?

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

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post abundant amounts of marketing on social media, 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 regard ads on the mentioned platforms legitimate, they do not doubt 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 users are on the site, scammers do their best to make the consumers buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discounts, free delivery, 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, 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 fraudsters, “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 complaints and user feedback about the site being a scam, they simply disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers know about the fraudulent activity, the profits will dry up, leaving cheats with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Tycokol.com 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, scammers 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 sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack user feedback when they have just started, as there were not many 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, once you face phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any unclear or drivel reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on fraudulent 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% discounts are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, scam websites set the prices 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 for cheap, but every discount has its reasonable limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes fraudulent sites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the customers, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the page will most likely have no support contacts whatsoever.

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

When they offer a contact email, or even a phone to reach them out, there is a huge chance 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 often reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned 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 legit shops and services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. 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, there’s no way 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 frauds.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As fraudsters most likely don’t have any goods, they are not able to make unique pictures. Thus their only option is simply to steal these images from other sites. When crooks sell identical items on different websites, you can find such images on similarly-designed fraudulent sites. By searching for the image 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

This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As scammers may use the same topic again and again, they use the same site design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, 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 frauds 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 Tycokol.com Scam