Is This Website a Scam? A Practical Checklist Before You Buy

Use this checklist before you buy from an unfamiliar online store.

By Alex Bacsa · Published 2026-05-30 · Updated 2026-07-18 · 11 min read

Start with the basics

Open the address bar and read the domain slowly. Scam shops lean on lookalike domains — extra hyphens, swapped letters, an unusual top-level suffix like .shop or .top, or a brand name with numbers wedged in. None of those is proof on its own, but each one adds weight. Cross-check the spelling of the brand against the official site by typing the brand name into Google directly instead of clicking through any ad or message that brought you there.

Next, look at the build of the site. Templated 'Shopify-clone' layouts are everywhere now, so a generic look alone is not damning. What you are watching for is sloppiness: copy-paste artefacts, mismatched fonts, broken images, footer text that mentions a different store name, language switchers that do nothing, or a cookie banner that links to a 'lorem ipsum' privacy page. One rough edge is a maintenance bug. Three rough edges in a row is a pattern.

Finally, check the site's age. Free tools like whois.com or who.is reveal when a domain was registered. A 'British heritage' store with a domain registered three weeks ago and no historical record on the Internet Archive (web.archive.org) is almost certainly not what it claims to be.

Check contact details and policies

A UK online seller should clearly provide its business name, contact details and geographic address, together with price, delivery, cancellation and returns information relevant to the purchase. A limited company should also identify itself consistently with its Companies House record, but a legitimate sole trader is not registered at Companies House and will not have a company number. For many distance purchases, consumers normally have a 14-day cancellation period, although statutory exceptions apply. Treat missing or contradictory information as a warning sign rather than treating any single field as proof.

Read the contact page critically. A generic email address as the only contact for a business claiming a long trading history is worth checking, but it does not prove fraud. Verify the stated trading name and address independently, and check whether the contact details are consistent across the site, order confirmation and payment page. A residential address can belong to a legitimate sole trader or small company, so the relevant question is whether the business has described itself truthfully.

Pay particular attention to the returns and refund text. Scam stores may copy a generic policy and add restrictive clauses such as a very short return period, a large restocking fee, or store credit only. Those terms may be intended to deter complaints, but a trader cannot contract out of applicable statutory consumer rights. Compare the policy with current GOV.UK or Citizens Advice guidance before relying on it.

Review payment methods

Credit cards carry the strongest UK consumer protection by a wide margin. Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 makes the card issuer jointly liable with the retailer for a qualifying purchase with a cash price over £100 and no more than £30,000, provided there's a genuine credit agreement and the standard three-party (you, the card issuer, the retailer) relationship — even if the retailer disappears tomorrow.

Debit cards are not covered by Section 75, but you can ask for a chargeback under the card scheme's own rules (Visa, Mastercard or Amex) — that's a discretionary scheme protection, not a legal right like Section 75, but it's still often successful.

PayPal is safest when you pay via 'Goods and Services', which carries PayPal's Buyer Protection. 'Friends and Family' transfers waive that protection — PayPal will still investigate unauthorised transactions and accepts scam reports, but a payment you authorised yourself is very hard to reverse once it lands. Any seller asking you to send via Friends and Family is asking you to give up your protection. That is the entire reason they are asking.

Bank transfers, cryptocurrency, gift cards, and money-transfer services like Western Union and MoneyGram all share one property: once the money has moved, getting it back is difficult and never guaranteed. UK bank transfers may qualify for reimbursement under the Authorised Push Payment (APP) scheme — see 'What to do if you've already paid', below — but crypto, gift cards and wire-transfer services offer little to no recourse. Legitimate retailers know recovery is hard and almost never insist on these payment methods.

If a checkout that started with 'pay by card' suddenly reroutes you to a bank transfer page or asks you to email for 'alternative payment details', stop. That redirect is the scam.

Inspect product pages

Scam stores often copy a manufacturer's description, a competitor's listing, or marketplace text. Copy a distinctive sentence from a product description and search it in quotes. Repetition can reveal a copied template, although legitimate retailers and authorised resellers may also use manufacturer-supplied descriptions.

Reverse-image-search the main product photo using Google Images, TinEye, or Bing Visual Search. Legitimate retailers may use their own photographs, licensed stock, or manufacturer images, so a repeated image is not proof of fraud. It becomes more meaningful when the same images appear alongside an implausible price, inconsistent branding, false business details, or copied policies.

Sanity-check the price. A very large discount on a current-season brand-name product deserves verification. A site listing unrelated brands across categories at blanket discounts, combined with a countdown timer and unverifiable business details, presents a stronger pattern than the discount alone.

Look for external reputation signals

Search the domain followed by the words review, scam, refund, delivery, and trustpilot. You are not looking for a flawless reputation. You are looking for patterns: missing parcels, refunds that never arrive, fake tracking numbers, customer-service emails that bounce, or — most telling — zero independent evidence of fulfilment at all. A six-month-old shop with no Reddit threads, no YouTube unboxings, no forum posts and no Trustpilot reviews is statistically unusual for a real retailer.

Trustpilot itself needs reading carefully. Scam stores buy positive reviews in batches, so look at the distribution of dates, not the headline star rating. Forty 5-star reviews all posted in the same week, written in similar broken English, with no detail about specific products, is the signature of paid review farms. Genuine retailers accrete reviews steadily over months, with a mix of stars, specific product mentions and occasional complaints answered by support.

Cross-reference with ScamAdviser (scamadviser.com) for a quick risk score, and check Report Fraud's alerts page (reportfraud.police.uk). Reddit's r/Scams and r/UKPersonalFinance are also useful — searching the brand name there often surfaces firsthand victim accounts months before Trustpilot catches up.

Verify the UK business itself

If a site claims to be a UK business, that claim is verifiable in about 90 seconds. Search the trading name on Companies House (find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk). A real UK retailer will appear with an active status, a registered office address, a list of directors, and filed accounts going back several years. A scam shop will either not appear at all, appear under a recently-incorporated shell company with one nominated director and no accounts filed, or use a company name that has nothing to do with the brand on the website.

Cross-check the registered office on Google Maps or Street View. Mass-incorporation scams cluster around well-known formation-agent addresses (you'll often see hundreds of companies sharing the same Birmingham, London or Manchester address). That alone is not proof of fraud — many legitimate small businesses use formation agents — but combined with a brand-new domain, missing accounts and absent reviews, it tightens the picture considerably.

For regulated categories (financial services, pharmacy, alcohol, supplements, electricals carrying CE/UKCA marks), check the relevant register: the FCA Register for financial firms, the General Pharmaceutical Council for online pharmacies, Trading Standards for product-safety concerns, and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for previously-upheld complaints against the brand.

If you are still unsure

Pause the purchase — losing a 'limited-time deal' costs nothing if the deal is fake. Check archive.org's Wayback Machine to see whether a site claiming a long history has an older public record, while remembering that incomplete archives are not proof of when a business began.

Send a specific pre-sales question through a contact route published on the site. A useful, relevant response provides some evidence that support is operating, but response speed, writing style or the email provider cannot prove legitimacy. No response, an answer that ignores the question, or details that contradict the site should add to the reasons to stop and investigate.

Finally, ask why the price is far below established sellers. There can be legitimate explanations such as clearance, grey imports or end-of-line stock. If the seller cannot provide a plausible explanation and several other checks fail, do not proceed simply because a countdown or stock warning says the offer will disappear.

What to do if you've already paid

Act promptly. For a qualifying credit purchase with a cash price over £100 and no more than £30,000, ask the card issuer whether Section 75 applies; the debtor-creditor-supplier relationship and other conditions matter. For a debit- or credit-card transaction, also ask about chargeback. Card-scheme deadlines vary, so do not assume a fixed cutoff.

For PayPal Goods and Services, open the Resolution Centre immediately. PayPal's current UK terms give 180 days for an Item Not Received dispute, but a Significantly Not as Described dispute must be opened by the earlier of 30 days after delivery or 180 days after payment. If you paid by UK bank transfer, contact your bank's fraud team immediately. Eligible APP-fraud claims are normally reimbursed within five business days, but a bank can stop the clock while gathering information and must reach an outcome within a maximum of 35 business days. Payment-rail, claimant, excess, cap and conduct exclusions apply.

Report the scam to Report Fraud at reportfraud.police.uk or 0300 123 2040. If a UK bank account received your money, give the receiving-bank details to your own bank and Report Fraud. Finally, change any reused password and monitor the affected card, bank, PayPal and email accounts for follow-on attempts.

Frequently asked questions

Sources checked

• GOV.UK — Online and distance selling for businesses
• PayPal UK — Buyer Protection terms
• Payment Systems Regulator — APP fraud reimbursement protections
• Which? — Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act
• MoneySavingExpert — Section 75 refunds

Reporting routes in this guide are checked against our verified canon of official UK sources — Report Fraud, the National Cyber Security Centre, and Citizens Advice — by an automated accuracy gate before publication. Editorially updated by Alex Bacsa, Founder & Editor, on 2026-07-18. Read about how Beat the Scam writes guides.