Vellicia.com Scam Store: What You Need To Know

Vellicia.com is a deceptive website that offers to purchase items at exceptionally cheap prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is in fact just a ploy to make you think this site is legitimate. 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 show the warning signs regarding the Vellicia.com shop, the way this scam operates, and explain how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.

Vellicia.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Vellicia.com may initially look like a authentic discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s deception. Unfair advertising methods, extremely low prices, absence of user support and user feedback – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.

Vellicia.com Scam

By purchasing on websites like Vellicia.com, it is questionable that you will obtain the items you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 scenarios characteristic for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to counterfeit items of popular brands, the grade 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 deal look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the delivered item, scammers may send a random item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a branded one, a dirty aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn quite inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most common outcome when ordering goods from pages like Vellicia.com. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply disappear. As scam websites do not aim to exist for a long time, fraudsters are not wasting effort creating even a remote sight of legitimacy.

Vellicia.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Vellicia.com runs 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. Frauds post massive amounts of advertisements on online platforms, 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 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 users are on the site, tricksters do their best to make the individuals buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discount promo codes, 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 peculiar manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, scammers 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 tricksters, “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 feedback about the site being a scam, they just disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals know about the dishonest activity, the profits will dry up, leaving cheats with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Vellicia.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, 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 reason (and way) to make any reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack buyer opinions when they have just started, since there were not many buyers 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 unrealistic reviews that have nothing to do with what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any blurred or gibberish 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% 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 ridiculous, 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 scam websites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the customers, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the site will likely have no contact info whatsoever.

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

When they offer a contact email, or even a phone to contact them, there is a huge chance that these numbers and emails will be dead silent to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.

As scoundrels often reuse numbers and emails for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned on a different website, 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 complementary, as there are a lot of legit shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. Each of the latter has the same feature 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 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 frauds.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As fraudsters are unlikely to have any goods, they cannot make unique pics. Thus their only option is simply to hijack these images elsewhere. When crooks sell the same goods on different pages, you can find such images on similarly-looking scam sites. By reverse image searching 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 scammers may scam people on the same topic repeatedly, they use 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 I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such frauds pretty easy, but crooks who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Vellicia.com Scam