Investigating Volsya.com: Legit Store or Shady Scam?

Volsya.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 in fact just a story to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. Upon ordering goods from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will highlight the concerning indicators regarding the Volsya.com site, the way this fraud operates, and explain how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in future.

Volsya.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Volsya.com may initially look like a authentic discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s deception. Unfair advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, absence of customer support and user testimonials – this site completes the scam bingo right away.

Volsya.com Scam

By purchasing items on sites like Volsya.com, it is unlikely that you will obtain the goods you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 cases typical 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 especially frequent case when ordering from pages that sell baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the purchase look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the delivered item, scammers may send a accidental item they have on hand 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 – frauds may turn quite inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most typical scenario when ordering items from pages like Volsya.com. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scam websites are not going to exist for a long time, fraudsters do not bother themselves with creating even a remote sight of legitimacy.

Volsya.com scam – How does it work?

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

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post huge amounts of promotions on online platforms, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say exactly 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 benign, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become particularly 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 consumers are on the site, swindlers do their best to make the customers 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 individuals 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 swindlers, “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 about the site being fraudulent, they simply 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 cheats with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Volsya.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the scam 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 purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack customer reviews shortly after the start, as there were not many customers 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, once you face phishy-looking reviews that have nothing to do with 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 fraudulent 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, deceptive websites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be absurd, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold at a low price, but every discount has its sensible limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes fraudulent websites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the buyers, 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 have no contact info at all.

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

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

As scammers tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a totally different website, be sure you’re 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 complementary, as there are plenty of genuine 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 paid for the order, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some sites may also ask for payments in crypto, which feature even less control. While crypto transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different rascals.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As frauds most likely don’t have any goods on hand, they cannot create unique pictures. Thus their option is simply to hijack these images from other sites. When frauds market identical items on different sites, you can find same images on similarly-looking scam pages. 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 frauds may use the same topic again and again, they reuse the same web design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search on Google advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the original site. It allows you to uncover such frauds pretty easy, but criminals who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are situations when Volsya.com site, together with similar scam sites, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are two particular malware types that aim specifically at such purposes. If you see excessive ads in your web browser, have your search inquiries going into an unusual search engine and some random pages open time to time, consider scanning your device 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 Volsya.com Scam