I’m sorry, but you’re not getting a Milwaukee M18 15-tool cordless power tool combo kit for $140, or a Dewalt 20V Max 10-tool cordless power tool combo kit for $99.
Our scam-awareness posts receive new comments on occasion, and you wouldn’t believe how many emails I get.
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For example, I received this email recently:
I purchased this item on 04/14/20. DEWALT 10Tool 20Volt Lithium Ion Liion Cordless Combo Kit with Soft Case, 1,88.00.
[TID:*******]Order Information,Payment No.PS******************
I have yet to recieve this item. I am in the process of taking legal action. Please respond or refund me the 125.30 total that I paid.
Why are they emailing me or ToolGuyd? I have no idea, but I occasionally get customer service emails as well.
I told the individual that it sounds like they got scammed. A Dewalt 10-tool cordless power tool combo kit for $125? No way.
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I also recommended that they contact the seller and consider disputing the payment charge with their credit company.
Side Note: Most legitimate retailers will not charge your credit card until or unless your order ships.
I can understand that there can be strong temptations when you find something at a crazy-low price. Is it a price mistake? Wholesale price? Is there an “inventory counter?” If you’re made to think that only a couple of items are left, or that the price will soon expire, there’s a sense of urgency on top of the strong temptations.
Caution gets thrown to the wind – you MUST take advantage of the crazy-low price!
Then they hit me with:
The like [sic] and advertisement was directly from your site?
I have yet to see any Google advertisement for unscrupulous retailers. I’ve heard there are some on Facebook, but that’s Facebook’s built-in ads and there’s nothing we or anyone else can do about it. I regularly review our Google ads to see if there are any companies or brands that should be blocked, but haven’t come across scam retailer ads on ToolGuyd yet.
ToolGuyd links to retailers that I will personally order from, and I vet them all regularly to help ensure a positive reader experience. For example, you will find links to Home Depot, Amazon, and Acme Tools, but not to Sears any longer.
If or when I see readers link to unscrupulous retailers, even if to say “is this company is a scam?” or “is this a legit deal?” I remove those URLs manually, to ensure readers don’t take any chances.
The most recent “secret shopper” tool retailer report is here.
I can tell you that I have not and will NEVER link to a retailer advertising a 10pc Dewalt cordless kit for $125, or anything of the like. There is a 99.9% chance such listings are not legitimate. I wouldn’t say 100% because strange things have happened before, with price mistakes and liquidation deals.
If it sounds good to be true, it’s most likely too good to be true.
I told the emailer that if the retailer was one of the regular ones I link-to, such as Acme Tools, Tool Nut, or Home Depot, I can try to help them figure out what’s going on via my contacts there. If it’s to Amazon or a retailer I’ve never heard of before, there’s not much I could try.
I finished up by saying that most legitimate retailers won’t charge a credit card until an item ships out, and if this place they ordered from charged their account and never shipped a product, they need to contact their bank or card company ASAP and dispute the charge.
I offered to help them sort things out if they provided a link to the retailer, but I never heard back.
That person is probably out the money, or their credit card number and personal information might have been stolen.
These scams keep happening because the scammers keep making money off of it.
We’ve discussed scam tool listings a couple of times now:
Scam or Not? Tips for Assessing Unfamiliar Online Tool Stores
Reminder: Super Low-Priced Dewalt and Milwaukee Cordless Power Tool Deals Might be a Scam
There are also an increasing number of reseller stores where they mark up existing products and use high-temptation and urgency sales techniques to trick you. As long as they ship you a product, it’s usually not a scam but simply exploitive.
Some people sell new Harbor Freight tools at higher pricing on Amazon, Ebay, and Craigslist.
Just like you must do your due diligence in avoiding scams, some quick shopping around on price can help you avoid exorbitant mark-ups.
One final note – while the low-price scams are usually on brand-name cordless power tool kits and combo kits, the stores that use a high sense of urgency to push hugely marked-up products usually feature generic straight-from-China tools. Comparing pricing on such products is often difficult because the brand names and even descriptions can change depending on the seller.
Just because you see ads on Facebook, via Google search, or elsewhere, that doesn’t mean they’re real or legitimate.
Is it a scam?
You could refer to the links above for more information on how to spot a scam.
But in a nutshell, this is the first tool you should use: https://lookup.icann.org/ If the online store URL has not been registered a long time, say over one year, something is fishy. Every single “is this a scam?” URL I have ever been asked to check has had a relatively new registration.
Tip: Only enter in the domain name, such as toolguyd.com. When doing a WHOIS search, you don’t need any www or other subdomain, or the http(s) part.
What you’re looking for is the Created date. Unless there’s strong reason otherwise, such as a friend launching a new website, I wouldn’t give my money to a newly-launched website. It seems that once a scam retailer gets into enough trouble, they launch a new website and start over.
Does it look like a legitimate business? Trust your gut. When in doubt, ask someone else – your spouse, your friend, on a public forum, you can email me, on social media, or anyone or anywhere there is someone looking out for your best interests.
If you’re still in doubt, don’t take the risk.
When you buy something at a store that has zero interest of actually shipping your order to you, what else can happen now that they have your credit card number and some personal information?
Tom D
The more bastardly ones actually SHIP something (usually a box of rocks or similar) and then contest chargebacks. Very evil.
Gene
Hmmm. Well I guess I’m not going to be receiving the Wright 255mm socket I paid 24.95 for then. Oh well, buyer be well 🙂
Peter
😂
Analyst
Bahaha! Thanks for the laugh Gene!
Scott K
I’ve used a domain lookup a few times when my wife asked if a website selling discount coats seemed legit- they weren’t. A number of brands will list the specific sites that are authorized retailers which is important for warranty claims.
Stephen
I got scammed on AMAZON once, on a box of diapers. The price was pretty attractive, but not suspiciously so. I buy a lot of things on Amazon and am rarely sensitive about shipping times, so I don’t always look closely at the shipping details.
Things started to get fishy when I read the shipping confirmation email. The order was shipping via Royal Mail, from England. You mean to tell me I can get a large box of diapers shipped across the Atlantic for less than the box on the shelf at Wal Mart?
The delivery date came and went. Nothing arrived and responses from the seller dried up. Thankfully Amazon took the seller down and refunded my money right away.
David
The problem with this is the ahole that scammed you will just create a new account and go right back to scamming people!! He was probably right back up and running within minutes of being taken down. These aholes make their living off of scamming people, so there’s NO WAY he was going to be down that long losing a ton
Brian
Stuart – these people could also be a victim of browser hijacking. This is where a virus payload is deposited on the computer and it replaces a real ad on your site with it’s own. For all intents and purposes, this ad appears to be legitimately hosted or presented from the visited site, but in fact is served from (usually) another compromised site…
Yohann
First thing I thought of as well. But this could also be any number of browser extensions that offer some nominal purpose but in reality replace ads with their own.
JR
What Brian says is correct. They likely have malware on their computers serving up ads.
One tip is to check for unknown or unwanted Extensions in Chrome. Another trick is to manipulate the site notifications section to pop ads. Most antivirus software do not check for these vectors and people mistakenly believe they are “protected” from everything.
Stuart
Enough people contact me about things like customer service requests, order ETAs, and catalog requests that it’s equally possible that someone falling for a scam listing doesn’t remember where they ordered from.
For example, I’ll get “I ordered from you, where’s my stuff?”, and also “here’s my address, please send me a Craftsman catalog, I couldn’t find the link on your website” emails.
I have also been told about the “ads” on our “page,” where someone is talking about their Facebook news feed or similar. We don’t run ads on Facebook, only Facebook runs ads on Facebook.
The individual quoted above never provided a URL for the store that scammed them, and so it’s possible they’re simply mistaken.
adam
I think it use to be worse around a year ago, but still happening. I have no idea how they get to the top of google, but they do.
Tell tale signs include any bare tool is price under $100, most of them the same price. Some sites will let you choose the color of tool. (No, I don’t want Milwaukee in green). They will often be tools and something else that doesn’t make sense to be sold on the same site, like furniture.
Click the contact information, and if you can’t call them, don’t bother.
fred
At one time snake oil salesmen had to look you in the eye to scam you. Now the marvelous Internet that brings us great sites like Toolguyd also allows scammers to reach whole new level of suckers. The essence of a successful con is usually greed – usually on the part of both the scammer and their “mark”. The desire for an impossibly good deal is a powerful siren song.
Kent
I wish there was a less painful way to educate people on online shopping.
If Home Depot offers that deal, I’ll jump on it *right now* because the worst case is that they refund my money. Best case is that I pay for a single battery and get 4 of them, plus a bunch of tools. Ordering it from an unknown company is just foolish.
Aaron
At these prices, I’m in for 2. Thanks for the tip!
Chris
This happened to my buddy the first Christmas that the packout sets came out, he thought he could get the 3 piece packout bundle and a 5 piece fuel kit for 299. I told him it was a scam and not to buy it but he did and got burnt. Not sure if he got his money back or not. I even told him a deal that good would be on toolguyd and because it wasn’t was my biggest red flag lol
TMedina
I hate to victim-blame here, but a personal recommendation or even endorsement is no substitute for your own common sense.
If a deal is too good to be true, it probably is.
Something about the Internet makes people lose their damned minds – like they’ll believe there are thugs and robbers lurking around every corner between home and the corner store, but everything online can be taken at face value.
Louie Orama
Stuart, I am a member of two sites (apps) that buy and sell (actually 3 including eBay, but I don’t sell on there-yet)—one is called Mercari and the other is OfferUp. And albeit I don’t THINK I’ve seen one of these scams on Mercari, I constantly come across them on OfferUp. I’m going to use an example. Being that I’m a DeWalt guy, a FlexVolt 9” Construction Saw typically costs $849 as a kit. You’ll see it popped up for a very low (and odd) number like $137.84. And right below it is blank.com. There are scores or different site names. You hit the nail on the head when it comes to temptation, but the price is so ridiculously low that I can’t understand how someone would fall for it.
Then of course you have your NON-.com guys that ONLY accept payments through Cash app, Venmo or whatever one they choose, but that is off topic.
But yeah, OfferUp has PLENTY of listings like this.
RayRay
>>But yeah, OfferUp has PLENTY of listings like this.
I see similar things on OfferUp but these are not listings – they are actually ads embedded between the listings.
Bob Barley
I would recommend to this guy that he take an internet safety course, maybe available through his local library or senior center.
Paul
On Amazon a common scam is that when you attempt to buy the item, the seller contacts you and attempts to get you to contact them and make a payment OUTSIDE of Amazon. Since the communication is outside of Amazon, all of the usual Amazon “protection” doesn’t exist, and they won’t refund you for these.
Another tell tale sign that works on Amazon and EBay is to look at the number of “likes” and reviews on the retailer. If there are very few reviews or a lot of bad ones, it’s pretty obvious something is wrong. I don’t know why but lately scammers register on Amazon, put up a half dozen blatantly obvious scam items, and then disappear a week or two later. I don’t know what Amazon is doing to screen their 3rd party retailers but it’s almost nonexistent.
bob urz
the other thing to look for in feedback is what the seller is selling. If he has hundreds of positive feedbacks for selling cheap trinckets” and NOT tools, chances are its a scam too.
bob
what gives? i keep hitting ‘add to cart’, and this page shows up!
frampton
The domain lookup is a great first step. They are almost always brand new – often within days.
Jay
I almost got scam trying to but a planer which was advertised for 80.00. I looked up the company and saw some shady behavior and decided to pass. I’m glad I did. Sometimes you have to pass when the deals to good. 🤔
Frank D
I have run into this a number of times, looking for a specific tool, upgrade part or outdoor power equipment repair parts. An unknown site with weird domain name stands out with 25-50% of the price. Checkout process is suspect. When you visit the main domain, you suddenly have a small boutique with women’s clots.
I have no idea why Google promotes these scam sites so heavily.
One detail in that regard, that I have seen is, a few of them looked to have a huge catalog of parts and photos by manufacturer indexed in a tree like structure … hundreds and thousands of pages; possibly something they scrape (steal) and duplicate from elsewhere, and perhaps google in its infinite wisdom likes the depth of the thousands of pages linking to and from.
I always try to report them, via search feedback.
Peter
In late 2019 I got scammed by a deceptive ad placed on Facebook. It wasn’t quite “too good to believe.” The product offered was priced a bit cheaper than a Harbor Freight sale price on a similar item.
I had to jump through a lot of hoops, but eventually, Paypal refunded my money.
I realized pretty quickly that Facebook offered nothing by way of dispute resolution. As a result, I will not buy anything advertised on Facebook. I wonder if legitimate companies realize that Facebook’s willingness to tolerate bad actors has cost them sales.
Robin
I used to see these all the time on Facebook. I would click on the About Us tab and it was a word-for-word copy of Home Depot’s About Us page.
I would report these ad-nauseum to Facebook. Most of the time I get a “thanks for letting us know, we’ll take this posting down from your feed but others can still see it.”
I’m starting to see them pop up on Offer Up. But I don’t see any way to report these postings. I assume it’s because I’m using the app on my phone and not through the Offer Up website. Funny thing is I started seeing these posts shortly after Offer Up and Let Go merged.
Jonathan Waldner
Or maybe they’re trying to scam you hoping you will reimburse them lol … Just a thought .
Shanna Johnson
The one I seen was Milwaukee it was a five set drills and stuff for $90 it looked like the actual website and everything but when I clicked on the pay information it asked for PayPal first and the name that it wanted to send the money to is [redacted]
Jonathan Waldner
Thank you. I will just buy my stuff locally for that reason.
Lee G
I just fell for the same exact scam. Within days after my order I was starting to wonder where is my order confirmation ? Where is my shipping info? So right when I was about to ask pay pal not to release my funds this was suspect they hit me with an update for shipping and gave me a usps tracking number! I was like awesome not a scam I’m gonna get my Father’s Day five piece combo kit. I tracked the number and it says it was delivered 2 days prior to receiving the notice and it was picked up at 2pm I thought that’s funny because I was there that same day at 11am picking up 2 other packages from eBay. Why didn’t they give me the big good package. I went to post office next day. Small town so the post master knows me and remembered the day in question. What these scammers/hackers did was give PayPal an already used number from my same zip code. Since usps can’t give out personal info it took a good min to figure out what happened. They hacked Amazon. And I was cheated Amazon and usps were involved unknowingly. I’m in the process of opening case with usps. Oh and Facebook sold me the Milwaukee website was legit.
Becki
Please let me know your outcome. The same exact thing has happened to me unfortunately. I already opened a claim with usps and am calling my bank to see if they can help.
Timothy
I came across these today [redacted] And [redacted]
Had I not already fallen for a prior scam for a game system for my son’s birthday I would have fallen for this as well but I learned my lesson the first time. What I don’t understand after conversing with my bank and fighting to try and get my money back with the bank’s reluctancy, they made the statement that it wasn’t worth going after them (the scammers) which I don’t understand because if they’re not going to go after them and seek legal action on these people than these people are going to continue doing this. Another problem I had was on eBay just a heads up on this scam. I purchased an item on eBay and the person that I purchased it from had given a false tracking number which after talking to the post office when it didn’t arrive on time I had been notified that this was an ongoing scam increasing in popularity. What the person does is they put an ad up for a particular item you purchase the item they ship it to you but the address they’re shipping it to is actually another person that they know or involved with the scam and that they get paid when the tracking number is posted. I think that should be fixed immediately to where they don’t get paid until the buyer receives the item and then verifies it has been received and it’s authenticity first Not when the seller post the tracking number that’s ridiculous. I hope this helps everybody have a great day be safe and God bless
Timothy
Update to my post I use the website you provided to look up the websites both were registered 4 days ago. So thank you for that resource I’ll be using it from this point forward. Toolguyd your awesome !!
Stuart
Glad to help!
I have found that the registration data is extremely difficult to argue against. Sometimes when a reader or shopper will ask me about an online retailer, they very much want it to be true and will ask “are you sure???” about many of the subjective red flags. When WHOIS info shows that a domain has not existed for very long, it indicates the high potential for scam intent and there aren’t many other ways it can be interpreted.
Timothy May
Why were the urls erased I though we were trying to protect people. Is it a legal issue or something it was a new one that just posted a couple hours ago I was going to list that one here as well but now I’m not sure if I’m allowed to
Stuart
1) Because there so many that including URLs don’t matter.
2) Because the URLs can sometimes give credibility to the sites.
3) Because some readers might go to the URLs and still give them their payment info.
Is it safe to click any links at these sites? One month, six months, one year down the road – what happens when that scam store URL is abandoned in favor of a fresher one? Will visiting the sites then result it malware popping up when you visit or click links? Or, they might replace the scam store with illicit or mature content.
There’s too much risk in allowing URLs for these scam stores, with little benefit. For every 1 URL that might be included there are many others, and with different appearances, brands, or product categories. As such, there’s no fixed example of what a scam store looks like.
Basically, there’s too little value and far too much risk. At the least, I don’t want links to legitimize them, through readers’ eyes or Google’s.
Additionally, there needs to be a disconnect. If the scam stores start searching their own names, they could come across my content and learn about the warnings and types of alerts and red flags I’ve been sharing. Analytics services can do the same. Sharing URLs could inadvertently direct them to these posts where they can learn how to build even more convincing storefronts.
Viatcheslav Abramov
Unfortunately didn’t see this post earlie…
September 2 ordered tools through those 70-80% off Milwaukee power tools websites, and lost money. They can generate doubled trucking number for UPS. Probably hack UPS system somehow, and package shown as delivered. So you can’t get money from PayPal.
Fighting for 2 weeks already.
Timothy May
Is it that time of the year again. We have been on here several different times trying to warn people about these scams these scams have been around for a long time. It’s pretty close to impossible to try and stomp them they’ll just simply switch and re-engage switch and re-engage switch and re-engage. It finally just realized on the willingness of people to get educated and keep an open eye out I have the resources and tools needed to verify and call out these people I should even call them people they’re the scum of the Earth . It’s pathetic if this is how you choose to make your living stealing money from other people oftentimes seniors and veterans it’s a pathetic shame I wish I had the time and the resources to go visit each one of these face-to-face I guarantee you they wouldn’t be doing it the next year.
Timothy May
My last post had some spelling errors but I think you can get what I was trying to say. I am a disabled combat vet that almost fell for this scam. Actually this site is what saved me from doing it. I have lost money on a game system scam at Christmas for my son. It was the same set up and at Christmas no less. I hadn’t seen this site yet. So my heart truly goes out to all of you that have lost money I know how it feels. I wish I could get my hands on every single one of these stupid pieces of crap. I pray that you possibly had your money protected by your credit cards or PayPal or whatever A lot of these people have insurance policies. Take care everyone and God Bless.
Timothy May
I want to thank all of you that are out there trying to educate and trying to help. I just seen the post I made when I first seen your site lol. I forgot I had done that. ( I got blown up and gave a TBI) I just wanted you all to know we appreciate or at least I appreciate what all you’ve done and the effort you’ve put forth. I would like to post this on my Facebook to educate them (2k+ followers ) but I’m not savy enough to know how to link it. I wish we could do a huge public awareness campaign. That will be the only way we can beat them . Take care and God Bless