Vivemax.us is a scam website that offers to purchase items at exceptionally cheap prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is in fact just a story to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. Upon ordering goods from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.
In this article, I will highlight the concerning indicators regarding the Vivemax.us store, the way this scam operates, and teach how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.
Vivemax.us Site – Scam Overview
As I said, Vivemax.us may initially appear like a genuine 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 dishonesty. Unfair advertising methods, extremely low prices, absence of user support and customer testimonials – this site completes the fraud bingo right away.
| Website | Vivemax.us |
| Hosting | AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc. Canada, Ottawa |
| IP Address | 23.227.38.65 |
| Threat Type | Scam/Fraud |
| Scam Type | Fraudulent/Scam online shop |
Vivemax.us Scam
By purchasing items on sites like Vivemax.us, it is questionable that you will get the items you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 scenarios common 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 indicate 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 pages that offer baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.
Wrong item. To make the transaction look real, but spend even less money on the delivered item, scammers may ship a incidental item they have instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a new one, a scratched aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn really inventive in that case.
Absolutely nothing. This is the most usual scenario when ordering goods from pages like Vivemax.us. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely vanish. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, rascals are not wasting effort creating even a remote visibility of legitimacy.
Vivemax.us scam – How does it work?
As any fraud, Vivemax.us follows a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.
Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post massive amounts of marketing on online platforms, 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 deem 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 individuals are on the website, fraudsters do their best to make the individuals buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discounts, free shipping, 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 quirky 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 tricksters, “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 grievances and user reports regarding the site being a scam, they just 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 money flow will dry up, leaving cheats with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.
Why is Vivemax.us a Scam?
Well, we just talked about the way the fraud site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is deceptive without risking your money. Fortunately, scams 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
Scam sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack buyer opinions shortly after the start, as 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, when you face phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any unclear or drivel reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on scam sites 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% markdowns are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. 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 rational limits.
3. No customer support.
That factor distinguishes deceptive 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 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 contact them, there is a huge possibility that these emails and numbers will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your inquiry.
As scoundrels tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a 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 whole lot of genuine services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. Each of the latter has the same feature I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what makes it so attractive to scammers – once you paid for the order, nothing will help you to get the money back.
Some websites may also ask for payments in crypto, which feature even less control. While cryptocurrency 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 real items on hand, they cannot create unique pics. Thus their only option is to hijack these images from other websites. When frauds market identical goods on different pages, you can find such pics on similarly-designed scam sites. By reverse image searching 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 rascals may scam people on the same topic repeatedly, they reuse the same site design under the new address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search on Google advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such scams pretty easy, but crooks who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.
Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design
