Have you come across an Ad on Facebook for Sephora Advent Calendar at an outrageously discounted price? Do you want to find out more about this and if it is a scam or genuine? Continue Reading for more details.
What is The Sephora Advent Calendar Scam?
The Sephora Advent Calendar Scam is a recent trending scam where scammers have created several Ads on Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, etc for a Sephora Advent Calendar and they are selling for only $29.
On the other hand, the Sephora Advent Calendar is an extremely popular holiday gift item. It contains 24 mini beauty products from various top brands like Tarte, Olaplex, Rare Beauty and more behind each door. The 2022 version retailed for $90 on the Sephora website.
How The Sephora Advent Calendar Scam Works?
The Sephora Advent Calendar Scam works in mostly same way scam online stores do. The scammers create multiple websites and then run ads for these websites on Various social media platform, especially Facebook. The scam ad displays the Sephora Advent Calendar for over 50% discount price in order to get customers from Facebook. They make these websites look so genuine, providing a UK or USA address. When customers click on these links on the Ads, they are directed to a website that looks genuine and like the Sephora website. They place their order, but this is just a scam website. After placing orders and paying, they never get what they paid for. The scammers never gets back to them. After a while the scammers abandon this website and create another identical one and the scam continues.
What Is The Content Of The Sephora Advent Calendar?
The Sephora Advent Calendar package contains, 24 beauty and skincare products carefully curated by Sephora for their customers for Christmas. The products include, mascara, eyeliner, lipstick, cleansers, moisturizers, etc. However Last year on the genuine Sephora website, this Sephora Advent Calendar was sold for, $93 but the scammers are saying you can get it at a discounted rate of $29. This is a huge Red Flag.
Reasons why you should not shop from These Fake Sephora Websites
The Sephora Advent Calendar Scam websites has so many red flags and these are reasons why you should not bother shopping from the websites. Some of the Red flags include:
Website Creation
The websites are mostly created recently , this is a sign of an easily disposable website thus it is suspicious.
Customer Complaints
Customers who shopped from this store have left several reviews online stating that they have been scammed by these fake Sephora websites offering the Sephora Advent Calendar. Most Customers never got what they ordered for or they got an entirely different product of low quality. And all efforts to contact the store for a refund proved abortive.
They Have Suspicious Contact Address
Most of this fake Sephora websites running the Sephora Advent Calendar have listed suspicious contact address on its website. This is a red flag and an indicator that it is a scam store.
Suspicious/ Outrageous Discounts
The outrageous discount prices on the website are too good to be true and serves as a red flag also showing that the store is scam.
Poor/No Security
The websites are always unsecure in the sense that it is not secured with Mcafee or Norton. This makes the website prone to hackers who can steal and tamper with Customers personal and financial information.
Stolen Contents
they have has stolen their contents, product images from the legitimate Sephora website.
This is quite common with scam online stores. They pass off products as original, but in reality customers receive cheap knockoff and have no means of returning it.
Does Using PayPal Guarantee Safe Shopping From These Fake Sephora Stores? No! And Here’s Why.
These days PayPal does not guarantee a swift refund. Also these scam online store always make the habit of using a fake tracking number that is totally unrelated to you. This fake tracking number is inputted in your PayPal transaction and this makes PayPal see this as a complete transaction and thus getting a chargeback is often times, impossible. For more information on how to get your money back you can click here to read more.
3 Things To Be Aware Of When Shopping From Fake Sephora Stores
When shopping from this scam store, you should be aware of these three things, they include;
Not Receiving Your Package
This is the normal routine with scam online stores, you get debited but never receive any package.
Receiving A Different/ Inferior Product
Receiving a completely different item from what was ordered. This is a classic example of a bait and switch scam, where you receive a different item, example of this is receiving a plastic sunglass in place of a wardrobe.
Hacked Credit Card
There is also a possibility of having your credit card hacked by this fraudulent online stores. In this case you can get debited for an item you did not order for or you can get overcharged by the store. Often time they keep deducting money from your credit card.
Conclusion
From every indications, it is clear scammers are running a Sephora Advent Calendar scam. It has ripped off unsuspecting buyers and it has a lots of Red Flags as we have seen in this review, Buyers should beware of this store. To easily spot scam online stores, online shoppers should check out the Domain age on Who.is, Also check the address of the store, if it has provided any, simply copy and paste in Google and Google map would show if it is a warehouse or a residential building.
Just like viviizstores ,dicoola, alien-tees, galacmart, southood, crocodiletime and other suspicious websites, customers did not receive the items they ordered but a cheap item or nothing at all.
Do this If you have been Scammed!
Have you been Scammed? Here are some things to do if you’ve been scammed.
Contact your bank and and file complaints also request for a new debit card. If you used Paypal as a method of payment you should document the transactions for future purposes, you can do this by keeping a screenshot.
In as much as online shopping has made life easier and simpler, one ought to be careful when ordering things online to avoid the risk of a hacked credit card and overcharged fees. Before ordering things from an online store check out the following.
The website age, A return address, Customer Reviews and its social media presence.
