Vareo-london.com Scam Alert: Beware of Counterfeit Products and More

Vareo-london.com is a fraudulent website that offers to buy items at unusually discounted prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a ploy to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. After ordering goods from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will highlight the warning signs regarding the Vareo-london.com store, the way this deception operates, and teach how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in future.

Vareo-london.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Vareo-london.com may initially appear like a legit discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s deception. Questionable advertising methods, extremely low prices, absence of customer support and customer reviews – this site accomplishes the scam bingo right away.

Vareo-london.com Scam

By purchasing on pages like Vareo-london.com, it is uncertain that you will acquire the items you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 cases standard for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to fake items of popular brands, the standard 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 particularly frequent case when ordering from pages that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the transaction look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the delivered item, cheats may send a random item they have on hand instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a dirty aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn rather inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most frequent scenario when ordering goods from pages like Vareo-london.com. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scam websites do not aim to exist for a long time, rascals do not bother themselves with creating even a slight semblance of legitimacy.

Vareo-london.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Vareo-london.com follows a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It usually consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post huge 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 consider ads on the mentioned platforms benign, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become especially 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 customers are on the site, 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 individuals stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a curious 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 deceivers, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.

Step 3 – Vanish. Once swindlers get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user reports about 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 deceptive activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving fraudsters with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Vareo-london.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, 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 sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with reviews. Obviously, even legit shopping sites will lack consumer comments when they have just started, as there were only a few 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 nothing to do with what the site offers for sale, 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 scam 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% discounts are not trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, scam sites 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 sell-off has its rational limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes dishonest websites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the clients, 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 to reach them out, there is a huge chance 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 scammers often reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a totally different website, be sure you are 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 plenty of genuine shops and services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. Each of the latter has the same feature I’ve already mentioned above: these methods do not suppose any refund options. And this is what attracts scammers – once you paid for the order, nothing will help you to get the money back.

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

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scams most likely don’t have any items, they cannot shoot unique images. Thus their only option is simply to hijack these images from other sites. When scams offer the same items on different sites, you can find such pics on similarly-designed fraudulent 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 frauds may scam people on the same topic again and again, they put the same web design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the copy of the page you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such scams pretty easy, but scammers who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Vareo-london.com Scam