Urbalovesm.best is a scam website that offers to buy items at unusually discounted prices. This site 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 goods from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.
In this article, I will highlight the concerning indicators regarding the Urbalovesm.best shop, the way this scam operates, and teach how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in future.
Urbalovesm.best Site – Scam Overview
As I said, Urbalovesm.best may initially look like a authentic discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s deception. Questionable advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, absence of user support and customer feedback – this site completes the fraud bingo right away.
| Website | Urbalovesm.best |
| Hosting | AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc. United States, San Francisco |
| IP Address | 188.114.96.3 |
| Threat Type | Scam/Fraud |
| Scam Type | Fraudulent/Scam online shop |
Urbalovesm.best Scam
By purchasing on websites like Urbalovesm.best, it is improbable that you will acquire 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 imitation items of popular brands, the standard will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may inform about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a especially common case when ordering from sites that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.
Wrong item. To make the transaction look legit, but spend even less money on the actual item, cheats may send a accidental 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 rather inventive in that case.
Absolutely nothing. This is the most usual situation when ordering items from sites like Urbalovesm.best. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scam websites are not going to exist for a long time, frauds do not bother themselves with creating even a faint visibility of legitimacy.
Urbalovesm.best scam – How does it work?
As any scam, Urbalovesm.best runs a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It usually consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.
Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post massive amounts of promotions 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 benign, 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 disguise 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 individuals buy something. Impossibly good 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 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, 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 swindlers, “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 just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people are aware about the dishonest activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving scammers with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.
Why is Urbalovesm.best 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
Hoax websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any reputation with reviews. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack consumer comments when they have just started, as there were not many clients 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 phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any vague or drivel 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 Christmas. In some cases, dishonest websites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be preposterous, 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.
This is what distinguishes fraudulent websites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the customers, 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 site will have no contact info at all.
Typically for fraudulent sites, the “About us” column is completely empty
When they offer an email, or even a phone number to contact them, there is a huge chance that these contacts will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.
As scammers often reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned on a different website, be sure that this is 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 plenty of genuine 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: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what attracts 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 feature even less control. While cryptocurrency transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different fraudsters.
5. Items’ images are sourced from another page
As scams are unlikely to have any real items on hand, they cannot make unique images. Thus their option is simply to hijack these images elsewhere. When scammers market the same goods on different pages, you can find same 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
Frauds do not copy only pics. As rascals may scam people on the same topic repeatedly, they use the same web design under the new web-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 copy of the site you’ve started on. It allows you to uncover such frauds pretty easy, but scoundrels who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.
Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design
