Analyzing Vorsnow.com: Should You Trust It? Our Take

Vorsnow.com is a deceptive website that offers to purchase women clothing at unusually discounted prices. It may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is actually just a narrative 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 warning signs regarding the Vorsnow.com site, the way this scam operates, and show how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in future.

Vorsnow.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Vorsnow.com may initially seem like a legit discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s deception. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of user support and customer reviews – this site accomplishes the fraud bingo right away.

Vorsnow.com Scam

By purchasing on websites like Vorsnow.com, it is unlikely that you will obtain the goods you’ve ordered. More commonly, 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 counterfeit items of popular brands, the quality 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 particularly often case when ordering from websites that sell baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the transaction look legit, but spend even less money on the delivered item, cheats may send a random item they have on hand instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a new one, a dirty aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn really inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most typical scenario when ordering from sites like Vorsnow.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scam sites do not aim to exist for a long time, frauds do not bother themselves with creating even a faint sight of legitimacy.

Vorsnow.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Vorsnow.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. Frauds post abundant amounts of advertisements on social media, 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 benevolent, they do not doubt 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 mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once users are on the website, tricksters do their best to make the individuals buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discounts, 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 peculiar manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, deceivers 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 fraudsters, “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 regarding the site being fraudulent, they simply vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people are aware about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving crooks with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Vorsnow.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 fraudulent without risking your money. Fortunately, frauds 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 purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack buyer opinions when they have just started, since there were only a few patrons 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 phishy-looking reviews that have nothing to do with what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any unclear or gibberish reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on deceptive 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 Christmas. In some cases, scam sites have the initial price 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 discount has its logical limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes deceptive websites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam 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 page 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 numbers and emails will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your inquiry.

As scoundrels often reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a completely different site, be sure that this is 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 not a guarantee, as there are a lot of trustworthy services 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 paid for the order, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some websites may also offer payments in crypto, which feature even less control. While cryptocurrency payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scams.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As fraudsters most likely don’t have any goods on hand, they are not able to shoot unique images. Thus their option is to hijack these images from other websites. When fraudsters market the same goods on different pages, you can find same pics on similarly-looking scam pages. 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

Frauds do not stop on stealing photos. As scammers may use the same topic again and again, they put the same web design under the new address, and voila – a new scam 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 page you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such frauds pretty easy, but scoundrels who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Vorsnow.com Scam