I can validate that Calamityware is a real company and a really awesome company. I’ve bought items from them and I was first alerted to their existence via a Facebook ad.
However, my wife has on several occasions shown me FB ads where the price for something is redonkulously low and I have to throw cold water on her excitement of finding a real bargain. If it looks too good to be true, it’s probably a scam.
Sure. I see ads for legitimate things like Ford trucks and Hickory Farms. But if i wanted more info on an F150, I sure wouldn’t click on the ad, I’d go to Ford.com or whatever their home page is.
Not Facebook-specific - but scammers seem to know what items are really in demand and quickly set up websites to “sell” those things. Last year we decided we wanted a tumbling composter - as, apparently, millions of others did. The legit sites were either sold out, or charging insane prices.
I found two websites that sold the thing for a reasonable price - but it took about 45 seconds on the first to twig my scam-o-meter. The second site was identical, down the the oddball assortment of unrelated crap. Some investigation showed the sites were very, very new and highly suspicious.
I actually bought the tumbler through an eBay listing - at roughly “list” price (pre-COVID, it had been going for about 60% of list) - and I actually received the thing, and my credit card info was not compromised. IIRC, the scam sites offered it for about 45% of list price.
My husband, sadly, WAS taken in by a scam site selling N95 masks; he ordered 3 of them for the household. Then we started reading about the website being under investigation; I filed a chargeback with the credit card and nothing else happened.
My in-laws actually ordered toilet paper online - from some company I’d never heard of before. Tiddly Tots, I think. I was convinced they had been scammed. I mean, I was CERTAIN of it. Googling the website with one spelling turned up a kids’ clothing storefront, with another spelling got a site selling miscellany but no toilet paper. I found the TP listing when I looked at a cached page.
They kept getting “shipment delayed” messages (the box was coming from China) and I was predicting it would never arrive. Meanwhile, I ordered them some from WalMart (dunno why they had not tried the more reputable sites) - which took a week or so but did actually arrive.
Weirdly, that site actually panned out. I think it took 2 months, and MIL said the rolls were kind of small - though she did say they felt nice, LOL.
Funny how several of us stumbled across that same scam ad!
If your friend ever found a real website for the gadget, I’d love to see it for real. I suspect it’s way too spendy, but it did look kind of fun!
Yesterday I posted a WaPo link to an article about all this. Today, there’s a follow-up article: