Venvv.com Scam Alert: Beware of Counterfeit Products and More

Venvv.com is a fraudulent website that offers to purchase various goods 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 placing an order on 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 concerning indicators regarding the Venvv.com store, the way this scam operates, and explain how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.

Venvv.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Venvv.com may initially look like a legit discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Questionable advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, absence of customer support and user feedback – this site completes the scam bingo right away.

Venvv.com Scam

By purchasing on pages like Venvv.com, it is doubtful that you will get the items you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 situations characteristic 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 especially frequent case when ordering from websites that sell 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, rascals may ship a random item they have on hand instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a branded one, a dented aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn rather inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most frequent case when ordering from pages like Venvv.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply disappear. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, fraudsters do not bother themselves with creating even a faint visibility of legitimacy.

Venvv.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Venvv.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 marketing on online platforms, 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 regard ads on the mentioned platforms genuine, 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 consumers are on the website, scammers do their best to make the consumers 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 curious manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, swindlers 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 crooks get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user feedback regarding the site being fraudulent, they simply vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals are aware about the deceptive activity, the profits will dry up, leaving cheats with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Venvv.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 deceptive without risking your money. Fortunately, scammers 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 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 shopping sites will lack consumer comments shortly after the start, since there were just a few consumers 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 phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any indistinct or drivel reviews that may describe any item sold on the site 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 feasible 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 ludicrous, 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.

This is what distinguishes scam sites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the buyers, 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 number to reach them out, there is a great chance that these emails and numbers will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

As scoundrels tend to reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a 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 complementary, as there are a whole lot of trustworthy services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. Each of the latter has the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: these methods do not suppose any refund options. 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 is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While cryptocurrency transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different fraudsters.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As rascals most likely don’t have any real items, they cannot make unique pictures. Thus their only option is to hijack these images elsewhere. When frauds market identical items on different sites, you can find such images 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 rascals may parasite on the same topic repeatedly, they put the same site design under the new address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the 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 Venvv.com Scam