Website Name
merkulas.com
Website Type
Online Furnishing Store
Is Merkulas Fake or Real?
Fake
Why Is Merkulas Fake?
Merkulas is an online store that claims to be selling home furnishings such as beddings, curtains, carpets and teacups. The prices on Merkulas are lower compared to other stores but the website states that it is holding a ‘BlackFriday pre-sale’.
This pretence is most likely a lie because Merkulas has previously been identified as being part of the Middle Bridge Scam Network, which is a collection of 390+ online stores that have been known to scam customers. These websites always have products ‘on sale’. The full list has been given at the end of the article.
A domain name lookup of the website shows that it was registered on 20th September 2019. The registrant’s details such as name, location and contact details have been hidden for privacy.
The About Us page contains the following text:
Merkulas is one of the world’s leading online stores and you have many great reasons to buy from us.
This same snippet of text is being used by at least 307 other websites and Facebook pages which may all be scams. An analysis showed that 217 websites, including Merkulas, are using shared IP addresses. This clearly shows that it is part of an organized network of online stores.
When I went through the checkout process using PayPal, the company name associated with the account was given as 广州辅仁电子商务有限公司, which translates to Guangzhou Furen Electronic Commerce Co., Ltd.
The Contact Us page of the website gives a different company name altogether, which is Chengdu Nanyi Trading Co., Ltd. This company is listed as a ‘nonclassifiable establishment’ by D&B, which might mean it is a shell company. The page also gives a Chinese address, but I have no way of verifying whether it is real. The details have probably been changed after the website was exposed as being part of the Middle Bridge scam network.
The only real contact method given is an email ID. Confusingly, the page mentions timings for customer service in the EST time zone, which could mislead unattentive people into thinking it is an American company.
Merkulas has no social media presence. There are almost no reviews available for the website, except for two complaints on ScamGuard. The complaints are the same ones commonly seen with websites that fall in Middle Bridge Ltd’s scam network. These include false advertising, delayed shipping, low-quality products and refusal to provide refunds. One of the reviews also mentioned that the customer ordered an RC vehicle, a product that is found nowhere on the website now.
It seems quite obvious that Merkulas is a scam. The website was previously found to be part of the Middle Bridge scam network. All traces of this connection have been erased, however, there are still several signs that Merkulas is a scam.
The content used on the About Us page is also being used by at least 307 websites and Facebook stores. The prices on the websites are lower than other websites, which is one of the most apparent signs of a scam. The images used are of low quality and look like they have been copied from other sources.
The company name used for the PayPal account is completely different from the company name given on the website itself. Merkulas mentions the customer service timing in EST, which may give the impression that it is an American company. However, the company is clearly Chinese as per the company name and address.
The customer reviews of Merkulas express the same complaints as those found for the hundreds of other websites falling under the Middle Bridge scam network. The complaints include false advertising, late or no delivery and refusal to give refunds. It is advisable to avoid shopping on Merkulas, as it seems to be part of an organized network of scam websites.
How to Get Your Money Back from a Scam
Remember: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
List of websites and Facebook pages using the same content as Merkulas
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- merkulas.com
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- movingbuy
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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.