Weathercocke.com Fraud Warning: Don’t Fall for Their Deceptive Tactics

Weathercocke.com is a deceptive website that offers to buy women clothing 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 narrative to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon placing an order on this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will show the concerning indicators regarding the Weathercocke.com site, the way this scam operates, and teach how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in upcoming times.

Weathercocke.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Weathercocke.com may initially seem like a legit discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a brief analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Unfair advertising methods, excessively low prices, absence of customer support and user feedback – this site accomplishes the fraud bingo right away.

Weathercocke.com Scam

By purchasing on sites like Weathercocke.com, it is uncertain that you will obtain the items you’ve ordered. More commonly, it results in one of 3 instances standard for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to fraudulent items of popular brands, the standard will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may mention 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 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 incidental item they have on hand instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a dirty aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn rather inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most common case when ordering items from sites like Weathercocke.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, scammers do not bother themselves with creating even a remote sight of legitimacy.

Weathercocke.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Weathercocke.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. Scammers post abundant amounts of advertisements on social media, 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 consider ads on the mentioned platforms benign, 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 customers are on the website, tricksters 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 customers 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 scoundrels get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user reports regarding the site being a scam, they just disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people know about the fraudulent activity, the profits will dry up, leaving fraudsters with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Weathercocke.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 deceptive 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

Hoax 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 customer reviews shortly after the start, since there were not many 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 markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or nonsense reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on deceptive websites you will get an entire saltcellar. Always search 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 viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, dishonest websites 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 at a low price, but every sell-off has its reasonable limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes fraudulent sites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to rip off the customers, there’s no need to bother about answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the site will likely have no support contacts at all.

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 possibility that these contacts will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

As scammers often 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 that this is 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 not a guarantee, as there are a lot of legit services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. All of them though have the same feature I’ve already mentioned above: these methods do not suppose any refund options. And this is what makes it so attractive to scammers – once you’ve sent the money, there’s no way to get the money back.

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

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scammers are unlikely to have any goods on hand, they are not able to shoot unique pics. Thus their only option is simply to steal these images from other sites. When fraudsters market identical items on different pages, you can find such images on similarly-looking scam pages. By searching for the image 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 parasite on the same topic again and again, they reuse 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 advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such scams pretty easy, but scoundrels who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Weathercocke.com Scam