Investigating Usbrandyclub.com: Legit Store or Shady Scam?

Usbrandyclub.com is a deceptive website that offers to purchase ceramics and glassware at extremely low prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is in fact just a narrative to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon ordering goods from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will show the red flags regarding the Usbrandyclub.com store, the way this scam operates, and explain how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in upcoming times.

Usbrandyclub.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Usbrandyclub.com may initially seem like a legit discounter or the merchant 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, unreasonably low prices, absence of user support and customer reviews – this site accomplishes the fraud bingo right away.

Usbrandyclub.com Scam

By shopping on sites like Usbrandyclub.com, it is questionable that you will get the items you’ve ordered. More commonly, it results in one of 3 instances standard 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 mention about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a notably frequent case when ordering from sites that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

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

Absolutely nothing. This is the most usual scenario when ordering from sites like Usbrandyclub.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scam websites are not going to exist for a long time, rascals are not wasting effort creating even a slight visibility of legitimacy.

Usbrandyclub.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Usbrandyclub.com runs a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post huge 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 consider ads on the mentioned platforms genuine, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become particularly persuasive 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 customers are on the site, fraudsters do their best to make the individuals buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discounts, 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 unusual manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, fraudsters 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 scoundrels get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints 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 people know about the deceptive activity, the profits will dry up, leaving crooks with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Usbrandyclub.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 untrustworthy without risking your money. Fortunately, fraudsters 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 websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack buyer opinions shortly after the start, since there were only a few 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 nothing to do with what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any unclear or balderdash reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on deceptive 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 viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, fraudulent 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 at a low price, but every sell-off has its rational limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes deceptive websites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam 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 likely have no contact info at all.

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 huge possibility that these contacts will be dead silent to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

As scammers often reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a totally 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. 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, nothing will help you to get the money back.

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

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As fraudsters are unlikely to have any items on hand, they cannot shoot unique pictures. Thus their option is to hijack these images elsewhere. When scammers sell identical goods on different websites, you can find such pics on similarly-designed scam 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 frauds may parasite on the same topic repeatedly, they reuse the same web 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 from the previous paragraph may lead you to the copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such scams pretty easy, but crooks who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are situations when Usbrandyclub.com website, along with similar scam sites, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are two particular malware types that aim specifically at such purposes. If you see excessive amounts of ads in your web browser, have your search queries redirected in an unusual search engine and some random pages open time to time, consider scanning your PC with GridinSoft Anti-Malware. This will help you to get rid of annoying promotions and scam sites.

Remove malware with Gridinsoft Anti-Malware

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Frequently Asked Questions about the Usbrandyclub.com Scam