Ustrendsshop.com Fraud Warning: Don’t Fall for Their Deceptive Tactics

Ustrendsshop.com is a fraudulent website that offers to purchase ceramics and glassware at extremely low prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is in fact just a ploy to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. After ordering from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will show the red flags regarding the Ustrendsshop.com shop, the way this fraud operates, and explain how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in future.

Ustrendsshop.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Ustrendsshop.com may initially look like a genuine discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of user support and customer reviews – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.

Ustrendsshop.com Scam

By purchasing on sites like Ustrendsshop.com, it is improbable that you will get the items you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 situations standard 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 inform 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 purchase look legit, but spend even less money on the actual item, scammers may send a accidental item they have on hand instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a branded one, a dented aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn rather inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most common situation when ordering items from pages like Ustrendsshop.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely vanish. As scam websites are not going to exist for a long time, scammers do not bother themselves with creating even a slight semblance of legitimacy.

Ustrendsshop.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Ustrendsshop.com 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 abundant amounts of promotions 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms legitimate, they do not doubt 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 mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once users are on the site, swindlers do their best to make the users 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 peculiar 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 scoundrels get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user reports 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 customers are aware about the fraudulent activity, the profits will dry up, leaving cheats with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Ustrendsshop.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 fraudulent 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

Hoax sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any online reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack consumer comments when they have just started, since there were only a few customers 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, once you face unrealistic reviews that have no relation to what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or absurdity 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. Do not hesitate searching 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 trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, scam sites 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 sell-off has its sensible limits.

3. No customer support.

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

As frauds tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a completely different site, be sure you’re 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 a whole lot of benign services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. All of them though have the same feature 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 paid for the order, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some sites may also offer payments in cryptocurrency, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different frauds.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scams most likely don’t have any items on hand, they cannot make unique images. Thus their option is to steal these images from other websites. When fraudsters market the same goods on different sites, you can find such pics on similarly-looking scam pages. 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 rascals may scam people on the same topic again and again, they reuse the same site design under the new address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search on Google advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such frauds particularly easy, but scammers who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Ustrendsshop.com Scam