Spotting fake shops: 8 signals a fraudulent online store can barely hide

There is one kind of discount where the checks from our guide to fake discounts no longer help — the kind with no product behind it at all. Fake shops are not a fringe phenomenon: consumer protection bodies identify roughly 1,500 new ones a month on average, and one European database of known fraudulent shops now holds more than 86,000 entries. They look professional, they appear in search results, and they advertise with exactly the number bargain hunters are looking for.

The good news: fraudulent shops necessarily carry certain markers around with them. If you know where to look, it takes less than two minutes.

The one signal that outweighs all the others

Before the checklist, the single most important marker: if payment in advance is the only option left at the end, the purchase is over.

Many fake shops still display PayPal, card and invoice options in the basket. Only at the final step — or in an email after ordering — does it turn out that your chosen method is "currently unavailable" and only a bank transfer will do. That is not a technical problem, it is the business model: an ordinary bank transfer is practically impossible to claw back once executed, whereas buyer protection or a card chargeback is not.

Eight signals you can check in two minutes

1. The legal notice. It must exist and contain a physical address, an authorised representative and an email address. Missing entirely: leave immediately. Nothing but a contact form, or an address with no name: likewise.

2. The VAT identification number. It appears in the legal notice and can be verified through the official EU checking service. Invented or copied numbers are the rule at fake shops.

3. The language in the terms and privacy policy. A reliable marker, because it is hard to automate: legal texts that have visibly been through a translation tool. Clumsy grammar in the terms alongside otherwise clean product pages is a strong warning sign.

4. The price against the market. Not "cheap" but impossible. If a current device sits between 400 and 450 euros everywhere and an unknown shop asks 149, the question is not how they manage it — but why they would.

5. The domain. Very young domains, brand or shop names with bolted-on suffixes (-outlet, -sale, -shop24), unusual endings for a supposedly local trader.

6. Trust marks you can click. A genuine seal links to a verifiable profile at the issuing body. A pasted-in image does not. Click it — if nothing happens, it is decoration.

7. Reviews without spread. Hundreds of five-star ratings, all from the same period, all in the same tone, not a single mediocre one. Real shops have three-star reviews.

8. A fake shop checker. Consumer organisations run free URL checkers that evaluate the technical characteristics of a page and compare them against a database of known fraudulent shops. If a shop is unfamiliar and you are unsure, that is the fastest route to a second opinion.

The special case: fraud on genuine marketplaces

Not every fraud needs its own shop. On large, reputable marketplaces third parties sell too, and there the pattern shifts: hijacked seller accounts with long histories, suddenly very cheap electronics, and a request to pay outside the platform "to speed things up".

The rule against it is simple and admits no exception: all communication and all payment stays on the platform. Anyone emailing you to ask for a direct transfer is circumventing precisely the protection the platform exists to provide. Check on every order who your contracting party actually is — the marketplace itself or a trader on it. That determines who your statutory claims are later addressed to.

If money has already gone

Speed matters more than anything else.

• Contact your bank immediately. If the transfer has not yet been executed it may still be stoppable. With a direct debit you can object for eight weeks.
• Start a chargeback with your card provider. Goods not delivered is a recognised reason for reversal.
• Use buyer protection where you paid through a payment service — the deadlines are tight, often only a few weeks.
• Report it. Even if the prospect of getting money back is slim: investigations almost always target networks rather than individual shops, and every report helps take the shop out of circulation sooner.
• Secure the evidence before the site disappears: screenshots of the order, the payment demand and the legal notice.

The thinking error the whole business model rests on

Fake shops do not work because their victims are careless. They work because they serve a very human expectation: that somewhere out there is the one shop that can do it cheaper than everyone else.

The sobering but useful counterpoint: prices in online retail are extremely transparent and competition is fierce. A trader offering a common product permanently 60 per cent below everyone else has no secret — they have no product. How far a realistic discount actually reaches in your market is shown by our analysis of the discount distribution. Anything well above it deserves suspicion, not haste.

* Prices incl. VAT, plus shipping if applicable. Prices may have changed since the last update; the current price on the merchant’s site applies. Real-time updates are not technically possible.