AIBU - I Think I've just been scammed by a fake Seasalt webpage

[ByUmberViewer]

I just placed an order on a seasalt webpage for some stuff they are selling really cheaply. When I looked at the order confirmation it said seasalts not seasalt for the company name. I did pay on my credit card.

what can I do to stop it going through. Can't believe I fell for this. Must be getting old.

Ducking now

Yeah,I think you should. Victim blaming isn't a good look.

Totally agree, that's why I messaged Lucy &yak. Doesn't seem that there's much they could do. Needs to be more action against Facebook etc

Absolutely, the most effective thing would be sanctions against FB, hitting them where it hurts, ie: financially. They're allowing fraudsters to operate on FB which is a disgrace

She's right though. Its basic common sense to check that the links to any websites on facebook are genuine.

That doesn't excuse FB letting fraudsters operate on their site.

Whilst I was pretty certain it was a scam I think Facebook were at fault for saying it was legal

@purser25 same here. It came up on my feed and I suspected it was fraudulent but I'm not going to victim blame people who didn't know. It was very convincing. And 100% FB should not get away with allowing fraudsters to operate on their site. They're facilitating criminality and saying it doesn't break their guidelines!

I suspect in time we'll see a proper crackdown on this with FB et al having meaningful sanctions applied so they can't get away with it.

You have my sympathies OP. I almost got scammed by this. It was very convincing, it was only the crazily low prices that alerted me.

FB is almost as bad as the scammers. They really are awful.

However I agree with the point that people really should be more aware of common scams like this one. There is lots of information about telling you how you can avoid most scams. If people can't be bothered educating themselves then they are making things very easy for the scammers. People are often refunded by banks in scams like this which means we 'all' end up paying. I think that means it's not out of order to suggest people make some effort to educate themselves.

For most people this was a very obvious scam.

Facebook are worse than the scammers IMHO for taking the money and looking the other way, the bastards. At least the scammers are bona fide criminals not pretending to care.

My conclusion after lots of similar stories and fake X profiles, scary fake FB profiles used to spread fake news, scam, dating scams, and spread political spin is that all Meta and X care about are telling genuine potential advertisers of the huge numbers of users and successful advertisers - they don’t say successful scam advertisers and that 20% maybe more if users are fake profiles. The only thing to do is come off FB. As I have said before I reported 200 fake profiles, including Rishi Sunak the president of the US truckdrivers union & King Charles who sells personalised invites to Buckingham Palace, And FB still has them live.

My credit card company refunded me via their dispute process.

Like others, I've continued to report every one of these ads I can find and received the same response from FB. However, I also note that all the ads I've complained about seem to have vanished and I can't find any more now even if I search for them. I'm not sure if this means FB algorithms are simply hiding them from me, or action has actually been taken in the Seasalt case. Are others still seeing live Seasalt scam ads?

The more I read about relevant UK legislation (e.g the Online Safety Act) the more it looks to me like FB are actively breaking the law. They're also blatantly breaking their own published Meta Advertising Standards: "Ads must not promote products, services, schemes or offers using deceptive or misleading practices, including those meant to scam people out of money..."

Rolling my eyes at the "people-bring-it-on-themselves" brigade popping up again on the thread. Irritating smugness aside, it's a rather non-constructive attitude that misses several points. In the UK we have regulation and standards around advertising, buying and selling, data protection etc.. in order to protect ordinary consumers. Why on earth should Facebook be exempted from these? Why should responsibility for scams it knowingly hosts be piled on the shoulders of its users instead? Unlike the fraudsters or Facebook respectively, scammed FB users have neither committed nor facilitated a crime. I see no case to give FB special license to ignore all rules.

FB shouldn't be operating as an ad platform or marketplace in the UK if it doesn't keep basic standards and laws in these areas.

I haven’t seen any fake seasalt ads either probably since I had an email from seasalt warning people.

Just wanted to make people aware that the Seasalt scam is still on Facebook- unfortunately I fell for it today 😪 I've cancelled my credit card and have to wait to see if I receive anything before they will investigate. Feel like such a twerp.

FB are so useless at removing scams that I don't believe any offers I see on there unless I check them independently. I reported a scam the other day and they came back a few days later to reply that it hadn't been removed as it "didn't go against their community standards."

My friend nearly did the same for a fake Roman website yesterday. She really didn't believe me that it was fake, even though the website address was something in Chinese!

They are very clever with making the websites look the same. But all items on the site were reduced by 70% which is too good to be true!

The "closing stores" excuse that comes up on these scam sales is a weird one too. If you are closing some stores, but not actually in administration, you'd just shift stock to your other stores, wouldn't you?

I should have stopped and thought about it - obviously 80% off is too good to be true! Also I should have come out of Facebook and onto the Seasalt site. I've learnt my lesson.

If people see this just write scam and put a lot of sad faces.

For anyone interested in Seasalt at reduced prices, the official eBay Seasalt Outlet store is brilliant. I got 3 skirts for under £80. Sent directly from Seasalt, tags still on etc.