Vallelshop.com Scam Store: What You Need To Know

Vallelshop.com is a fraudulent website that offers to purchase items 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 narrative to make you think this site is legitimate. After ordering goods from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will demonstrate the red flags regarding the Vallelshop.com store, the way this scam operates, and teach how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in future.

Vallelshop.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Vallelshop.com may initially appear like a legit discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s deception. Unfair advertising methods, extremely low prices, absence of customer support and user reviews – this site accomplishes the fraud bingo right away.

Vallelshop.com Scam

By purchasing on websites like Vallelshop.com, it is improbable that you will obtain the goods you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 scenarios typical 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 quality will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may notify about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a particularly often case when ordering from sites that sell baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the deal look legit, but spend even less money on the delivered item, scammers may send a incidental item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a scratched aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn really inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most common situation when ordering goods from pages like Vallelshop.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely disappear. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, fraudsters are not wasting time creating even a vague visibility of legitimacy.

Vallelshop.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Vallelshop.com runs a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with certain 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 suspect anything at this point. Ads become particularly compelling 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 users are on the website, fraudsters 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 consumers 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, 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 scammers, “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 disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers know about the dishonest activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving scammers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Vallelshop.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the fraud site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is untrustworthy without risking your money. Fortunately, rascals 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 purpose (and way) to make any reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack customer reviews shortly after the start, since there were not many buyers 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 no relation to what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or gibberish reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on dishonest 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% markdowns are not trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, fraudulent sites 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 sane limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes dishonest sites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the clients, there’s no need to bother about answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the site will have no contact info at all.

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

When they offer an email, or even a phone number to contact them, there is a great possibility that these emails and numbers will be dead silent to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your inquiry.

As scammers tend to reuse numbers and emails for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a completely 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 complementary, as there are a lot of legit shops and 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: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what attracts scammers – once you paid for the order, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some sites may also offer 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 fraudsters most likely don’t have any real items on hand, they cannot create unique images. Thus their only option is simply to steal these images elsewhere. When fraudsters market the same goods on different pages, you can find such images 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 frauds may use the same topic again and again, they reuse the same web design under the new URL, 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 scoundrels who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are cases when Vallelshop.com website, along with similar scam sites, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are malware types known for such behavior. If you notice excessive ads in your web browser, see your search queries going into a different search engine and some random pages open time to time, consider scanning your system with GridinSoft Anti-Malware. This will help you to get rid of annoying promotions and scam sites.

Remove malware with Gridinsoft Anti-Malware

We have also been using this software on our systems ever since, and it has always been successful in detecting viruses. It has blocked the most common adware as shown from our tests with the software, and we assure you that it can remove malware as well as other malware hiding on your computer.

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Frequently Asked Questions about the Vallelshop.com Scam