Is this website legitimate or a scam?

Is eshoebuys.com a scam website?

• I was looking to buy shoes online when i came across www.eshoebuys.com they seem to be much cheaper than the competing websites, but there's a lot fishy with their website... a. they don't have any address or written anywhere, or storage location or offices. b. the phones they provide do not work. c. the addresses they provide seem like they come with different "@" endings, which is suspicious. d. in the bottom of their website it says "2008" as if the website has been built than... but checking through "godaddy.com" showed that the website has been created in July 2010, and updated like a day ago (on July 4th, 2011). e. they claim that they are a BBB Accredited business here: http://www.eshoebuys.com/bbb/ but in the BBB website it's not possible to find them. f. their shipping details are very strange and it is unclear which company they ship with...: http://www.eshoebuys.com/shipping-details g. when you finally buy and choose to pay - if it's through credit card - you're only able to choose visa. h. on PayPal they are a premium member (to be allowed to receive high volume of transactions), but they ARE NOT a verified member. which is highly suspicious. i. there's another website - eshoebuyer.com which looks exactly the same, also offers free shipping, and i also think is a big scam done by the same people.... all this information has lead me to believe that this is a big scam. I do hope i am wrong... my real problem: I want to buy online and get new five fingers shoes in like 10 days, and i don't wanna have to wait for them to not deliver my shoes and than go complain to PayPal... and so i hope someone could help me determine - are they for real or is this a hoax???? i really hope i am wrong and that they are just a great website doing a great service to the public by selling much cheaper shoes... = ] all best, -foxy

• Answer:

  100% scam. And you did an excellent job of investigating, finding lots of red flags that denote a fake site and it is a fake website pretending to sell cheap merchandise. Any site that advertises merchandise cheaper than the official manufacture's website is a fake site shipping gosh awful crappy knock-offs or simply collecting cash and not even bothering to ship fakes. The pictures on the site look like the real merchandise because those pictures ARE of the official merchandise. Those pictures were stolen from the official manufacture's website. If you receive anything at all, which is doubtful, it will not resemble those pretty pictures at all. The one, lone payment option says it all, paypal. The credit card icons are just there for show, that site does not accept credit cards, only anonymous cash payments. Paypal can only get your money back if there is money left in the scammer's paypal-linked bank account. Scammers know this and will immediately withdrawal your money and disappear. No money in the scammer's paypal-linked bank account means absolutely no possibility of refund for you. In all seriousness, when something goes wrong, what will you do? Send an email that is ignored and blocked? Send chat requests until you are ip banned? Call internationally and speak fluent Chinese? The UPS, TNT and DHL icons are there only to take up space, that site only ships with EMS, the Chinese post office, good luck getting the "tracking number" they give you to work on the EMS website. You will need even more luck trying to contact EMS when your tracking stops and your "package" is lost somewhere. You could then be really lucky, your "package" is discovered, seized by "customs" and all you need to do is pay even more money via Western Union or moneygram to the "custom's official" who uses a free email address just like that site has a free email address as its contact information. Free email addresses are easy to open and close completely anonymously.