Website Name
MaxoPhones.online
Website Type
Online Smartphone Store
Is Maxo Phones Fake or Real?
Fake
Why is Maxo Phones Fake?
Maxo Phones is a smartphone brand which claims to sell its smartphones at extremely low prices. Most of its phones are priced at INR 3,999 and Maxo’s most expensive smartphones cost INR 4,999. The phones being sold by Maxo look similar those by popular brands such as Redmi, Vivo, Samsung and more. The website claims that all its smartphone models are currently on sale.
A domain name lookup of the website shows that it was registered on 21st May 2020. It is registered under the name of Ganpat Trading located in New Delhi.
A google search for Ganpat Trading Delhi brought up a number of reviews going back to 2018 on websites such as GrahakSuraksha, Cyber Crime Complaints, Complaint Lists and Voxya. The customers allege that the company has sold them counterfeit products which include watches, smartwatches, pen drives, memory cards, earphones and speakers. The common complaint regardless of the product is that the customers ordered the products assuming that they were original, only to receive low-quality counterfeits.
Ganpat Trading’s modus operandi seems to be that it runs Facebook ads to direct traffic to its websites. Customers have mentioned different websites, such as BrandShoppingnow.com, MyWatchCart.com, WearableBuds.co.in and GreatDeals.com. None of the websites is active anymore.
Coming back to Maxo Phones, the first impression of the brand’s website is astonishingly poor. The home page is filled with low-quality images which are badly cropped. The main banner image on the website itself is pixelated. This suggests it was copied from another website. Sure enough, I found the same image used in various articles and posts.
In fact, all the images being used on Maxo’s website are lifted from other websites. The phone models shown are originally sold by brands such as Redmi, Vivo, Cubot, Infinix and Samsung. The logos and model names in the original pictures have been edited out.
The textual content on Maxo’s website is of poor quality too. The About Us section is absolutely nonsensical and is clearly copied from another website. It also mentions that the company does not offer any returns or refunds. This statement is contradicted by the Refund Policy page of the website which says that Maxo has a 7-day return policy. This shows that the content of the website is fake.
Maxo has a social media presence on Facebook. The page was created on 22nd May 2020. The images used in the profile picture and cover image of the Facebook page are copied from other smartphone brands too.
Maxo is running ads on Facebook at the time of writing this article. They are offering a phone at INR 3,999 with the same features as the Vivo V15 which is priced at INR 19,990.
Maxo has not provided any phone number or address on the website. The only way to contact them is using a form on the website. They have also provided two email addresses which were found to be fake when checked on MailTester as there is no mail server for maxophones.online.
The website also states that Maxo has 100+ service centres. Clicking on the link to view the service centres location opens Google Maps with a pin showing the city of Bengaluru.
It is obvious that Maxo Phones is a scam. The website is fake from top to bottom. All the products are on sale even though the website has launched less than two months back. There is not a single real image of any phone sold by the brand. All the phones shown on the website are edited images of models by popular brands. The email IDs provided don’t work and the claim that there are 100+ Maxo service centres is clearly fake.
Maxo seems to be the latest scam by Ganpat Trading which is notorious for selling fake products to customers. I urge users to report Maxo’s Facebook ads by going to this page and clicking the 3 dots on top to report the ad as a scam.
*Update*
As expected, complaints about fake products being delivered by Maxo have started coming in. I spotted this complaint on Twitter which was posted on the website of Consumer Complaints Court:
How to Get Your Money Back from a Scam
Remember: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
If you have been the victim of an ecommerce scam, you can take the following steps:
- Lodge a complaint at the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal
- File a complaint with the payment portal and ask whether the payment can be reversed.
- File a complaint with the Consumer Complaints Forum
- Leave a negative review on review portals such as Scamadviser, TrustPilot, OnlineThreatAlerts and SiteJabber
- Report the website to Google using the Suspicious Site Reporter extension for Chrome
- Give a low rating to the website on Web of Trust. You can also install their extension for the same.
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.