WebBuyer.in is a fraudulent website that offers to buy various goods at unusually discounted prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is in fact just a ploy to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. After ordering from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.
In this article, I will show the concerning indicators regarding the WebBuyer.in shop, the way this deception operates, and show how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.
WebBuyer.in Site – Scam Overview
As I said, WebBuyer.in 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 indicate clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, absence of customer support and customer feedback – this site fulfills the scam bingo right away.
| Website | WebBuyer.in |
| Hosting | AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc. Canada, Ottawa |
| IP Address | 23.227.38.65 |
| Threat Type | Scam/Fraud |
| Scam Type | Fraudulent/Scam online shop |
WebBuyer.in Scam
By purchasing on sites like WebBuyer.in, it is uncertain that you will acquire the goods you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 instances 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 characteristic 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 particularly common case when ordering from pages that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.
Wrong item. To make the trade look real, but spend even less money on the actual item, frauds may ship a incidental item they have on hand instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a new one, a dented aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn quite inventive in that case.
Absolutely nothing. This is the most typical outcome when ordering items from pages like WebBuyer.in. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, frauds do not bother themselves with creating even a slight visibility of legitimacy.
WebBuyer.in scam – How does it work?
As any fraud, WebBuyer.in follows a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.
Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post abundant amounts of advertisements 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 regard 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 mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.
Step 2 – Take the Money. Once individuals are on the website, scammers do their best to make the users buy something. Impossibly good 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 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 scammers, “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 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 money flow 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 WebBuyer.in a Scam?
Well, we just talked about the way the scam site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is deceptive without risking your money. Fortunately, fraudsters 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 reviews. Obviously, even legit shopping sites will lack buyer opinions when they have just started, since there were only 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, when you face unrealistic reviews that have nothing to do with what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any unclear or drivel reviews that may describe any item sold on the site 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% discounts are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, dishonest 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 sensible limits.
3. No customer support.
That factor distinguishes fraudulent websites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the customers, 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 whatsoever.
Typically for fraudulent websites, the “About us” column is completely empty
When they offer an email, or even a phone to reach them out, there is a great chance that these contacts will be unresponsive to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your inquiry.
As scoundrels tend to reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a completely different site, 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 not a guarantee, as there are a whole lot of trustworthy services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. 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 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 feature even less control. 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 frauds are unlikely to have any items, they cannot shoot unique pics. Thus their only option is simply to steal these images from other websites. When scams market the same goods on different sites, you can find such pics on similarly-designed 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
Scammers do not copy only photos. As rascals may scam people on the same topic repeatedly, they use the same site 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 allows you to unveil such frauds particularly easy, but scammers who create them never aim at cautious users.
Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design
