Fivecotton.com (Hangzhou Shaohuo Technology) | Fake or Real?

Website Name

fivecotton.com

Website Type

Women’s Clothing Store

Is Fivecotton Fake or Real?

Why Is Fivecotton Fake?

Fivecotton is a website that claims to be selling women’s clothing items such as dresses and tops at low prices. The products on the site are not original and can be found on several other online stores, most of which look like shady Chinese sites.

In the above screenshot, you can see how poorly the image has been photoshopped. In fact, most of the product images on the site appear to be edited.

They are not actual photos of the clothing, rather they are designs superimposed into stock images of models. Therefore, the images can be misleading as customers may receive products that are different from the images.

A domain name lookup of the website shows that it was registered on 20th April 2021 in Zhejiang, China. The organization name has been given as ‘Hang Zhou Shi Xi Hu Ou’, however, there is no way to tell if this is a real company or has any connection to Fivecotton.

Therefore, it is a new website that is being operated from a high-risk country for scams.

Using the Scamadviser Analyzer, I found that there are at least 8 other sites that have been registered under the same company name. This is the first hint that Fivecotton may be run by a Chinese scam network.

The About Us page of the website contains the following text:

Hi lovelies!
Fivecotton.com did not exist until 2011 at Milan.We have been playing the role as a manufacturer as well as a supplier ever since in Europe. Our factories in Vietnam and Philippines have been making clothes for many famous brands. However, according to the service agreements, we are unable to disclose their names. Our designers and workers have made clothes for millions of women in past ten years. Watching our clients sharing photos online with their big smiles makes us realize that what we are producing is not just clothes, but also happiness and joy.

Now we are operating our own business – Fivecotton.com. We sell products directly made by our own factories with high quality but lower price. We believe this a mutual benefits for both our clients and us manufacturers.

Fivecotton.com was created by a small team of young people who were inspired to make a difference in the fashion industry.

An Unbiased Platform for Independent Designers
Instead of inviting big fashion brands to sell their new designs on our website,

Fivecotton.com is devoted to creating an unbiased platform for small brands and yet-to-be-famous designers who are seeking bigger audiences for their designs.

Directly Linking Designers to Customers
We exert to make a difference to the traditional business mode of fashion industry by skipping unnecessary procedure of middlemen between customers and designers. By doing so, we are able to deliver the latest designs to our valued customers in the fastest speed and to a widest reach.

A Social Responsible Market Player

Fivecotton.com provides support to fashion designers and brands that are highly engaged in using recyclable materials throughout their creation. Due to the founder’s experience of fashion industry in early years, Fivecotton.com team pays extra attention to the welfare of employees. Furthermore, Fivecotton.com would only cooperate with brands that offer fair treatment and salary to their employees. Fivecotton.com donates part of its revenue to charities to help tackle issues of extreme poverty around the world.

Company location and Logistics Center

Fivecotton.com is a registered business entity based at Milan ,and it has their own logistics center located in Singapore. While most of the Internet-based fashion retailers usually put their logistics center in North America, we prefer Singapore because of its world-class delivery capability and capacity. Moreover, since most of our factories are located in Asia, the choice of Singapore helps to cut down the cost on delivery for our customers.

If you have any questions, please contact at service@fivecotton.com

This text is similar to the content on sites run by known scam networks such as Xehia Trading and Cugo Holdings. Further, I found that there are at least 57 websites using the same text.

Using Qti.ai’s Scami, I got a list of 185 additional sites that have similar text, bringing the total to 242. There is a high likelihood that all these sites might be operated by bait-and-switch scammers from China.

As you can see in the screenshot above, Fivecotton claims that it has been operating since 2011 from Milan. There is no reason to believe that any of that is true, as the website was created in April 2021 from China.

Fivecotton also claims that it has a logistics centre in Singapore, but there is a high chance that people who order from this site will receive their packages from China.

Confusingly, the Terms of Service page of the website claims that Fivecotton is ‘governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the UK.’ This makes no sense considering the company claims to be based in Milan and Italy is not a part of the UK.

There is yet another hint of Fivecotton being part of a scam network on the Privacy Statement page. The email ID of the Compliance Officer is given as ‘service@hilifemart.com’ which is of a completely different website.

While testing the checkout process, I found that the PayPal account associated with the site is called ‘Microsequence’. This is strange because this name is not mentioned anywhere on Fivecotton’s website.

There are no social media pages mentioned on Fivecotton’s website. However, I found that it is operating two separate Facebook pages created on the same day. Both these pages are apparently being used for advertising on Facebook and Instagram.

These pages provide the phone number ‘+1 502-833-8765’ which carries the country code of the USA and area code of Kentucky. First of all, this makes no sense as Fivecotton is run by a Chinese company pretending to be based in Italy.

The number is registered with Bandwidth which is a VoIP provider. Therefore, the number can be operated from anywhere in the world.

The page information also confirms that Fivecotton is owned by a Chinese company. The company name is given as ‘杭州抖货科技有限公司’ which translates to ‘Hangzhou Shaohuo Technology Co., Ltd.’

The only contact detail provided on the website is the email address ‘service@fivecotton.com’. There is no company information provided anywhere on the website such as a phone number or address. Therefore, Fivecotton can only be contacted by email.

The only review for Fivecotton that I could find was on one of their Facebook pages. The customer has written that they never received their order and did not get a response to their queries.

If you want to share your review of Fivecotton or any of the sites listed on this page, you can do so in the comments below or on my social media pages.

Conclusion

It seems incredibly likely that Fivecotton and the 251 similar sites may all be operated by Chinese scam networks.

Fivecotton is a new website created in April 2021 and is operated from China. The domain registration information shows that it was registered by a company called ‘Hang Zhou Shi Xi Hu Ou’ which also seems to own at least 8 other online stores.

However, Fivecotton’s website claims that it has been operating since 2011 and is owned by a company based in Milan despite there being no evidence of this being true. The site’s Terms of Service page states that it is governed by UK laws, which makes no sense at all.

It also claims to have a logistics centre in Singapore, but my hunch is that the products will arrive from China. The content on Fivecotton’s About Us page is similar to that found on 240+ sites, including many run by known Chinese scam networks.

The products sold by Fivecotton are mass-produced Chinese clothing and the same can be found on numerous other websites, many of which are Chinese stores of dubious origin.

The images of the products are edited and are not actual photos of the clothes. Therefore, customers may end up receiving clothes that are different from what is advertised.

Fivecotton is operating at least two separate Facebook pages, both of which seem to be created for running ads on Facebook and Instagram. The page information shows that they are operated from China and the page owner is listed as a Chinese company.

The only review available for Fivecotton is by a customer complaining that they never received their product or any response to their inquiries.

It is advisable to avoid shopping on Fivecotton or any of the 251 similar sites, as there are high odds of them being bait-and-switch scams operated from China.

If you feel that you have been scammed by any of these sites, you can report them to Shopify for abuse. You can also report the seller to PayPal.

How to Get Your Money Back from a Scam

Remember: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

To read about other Scam Networks, click here.

If you found this information useful, please consider supporting my work.

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If you have been the victim of an ecommerce scam, you can take the following steps:

1. Lodge a cybercrime complaint online or with the local police office
2. File a complaint with the payment portal and ask whether the payment can be reversed
3. Leave a negative review on review portals such as Scamadviser, TrustPilot, OnlineThreatAlerts and SiteJabber
4. Give a low rating to the website on Web of Trust. You can also install their extension for the same
5. Report the scam site to web filtering companies.

Disclaimer: This review is intended for information only and should not be relied on when making financial or business decisions. If you are a website owner and would like to provide clarifications regarding your business and/or website, please get in touch using the Contact Form.