FAKE ALERT: All Offers From “Samplesso” Are A Scam
Important Note: When you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Content, pricing, offers and availability are subject to change at any time - more info.
Samplesso.com has been making the rounds on freebies sites and forums pretty rapidly at the beginning of 2024, and at first I thought it was a legit company. Until recently, a reader said they encountered an error after signing up, and when I got the error too, I saw it was using simply WordPress software, not a robust, custom made tool that you’d see from a legit company like SoPost or Sampler.io. Upon digging into this site more, it has many red flags that indicate it’s a full blown scam. I must say it was an impressive presentation and it fooled me, but it’s 100% clear this is a fake site and fake company now. And a big hat tip to HeyIt’sFree for calling this scam out earlier this year! I am building on their investigation below.
Advertisement
Worried about your personal info? Generally, these are just ways to spam your email, but be attentive. While these scams may seem harmless, you never know what these people will do with your information. But generally it’s not the end of the world, just more spam emails. And always double check any links you click in emails from important companies like your bank and such!
Here are all the URLs for their known fake free sample offers at the time of this writing for reference, I urge you not to share your information with this website or visit it:
- https://samplesso.com/samplesso-us-2024-02-banila-co-cleansing-balm-32us53se142b71/
- https://samplesso.com/samplesso-australia-2024-02-innisfree-sunscreen-3aau73be142e019/
- https://samplesso.com/2024-02-guerlain-aqua-allegoriags-12e92a3110/
- https://samplesso.com/2024-01-charlotte-tilbury-35273ee1a7d40246-2/
- https://samplesso.com/restricted-offer-id-sd689965rid49a/
- https://samplesso.com/2024-01-lancome-lash-idole-mascara-sample-2032ee2b5c22pa247/
- https://samplesso.com/2024-01-lancome-clarifique-essence-35273ee1a7d40246/
- https://samplesso.com/2024-01-tiffany-co-rg-q93ec07de311/
- https://samplesso.com/us-test-kj-2024-01-charlotte-tilbury-35273ee1a7d40246/
- https://samplesso.com/2024-01-charlotte-tilbury-35273ee1a7d246/
Let’s dig into why Samplesso is a fake
- The company claims to have been “founded in 2021” on their About Us page, but the domain was only registered on 2023-12-31.
- The footer of their website has a typo that says: “Sampleoo” not “Samplesso” as it should, HeyIt’sFree looked up Sampleoo.com and it was registered on 2023-12-26, likely by the same person. If one investigates the WordPress users for samplesso.com, Sampleoo and Samplesso are the usernames which 100% ties these two domains together.
- Samplesso appears to be attempting to backdate their very limited set of blog articles to 2022 to make their company seem older than it is, sketchy.
- None of their listed C-level staff (Deborah Holmes, Bruce Stevens, Bobby Harris) can be found on LinkedIn or have any photos online. It’s unusual for high-level executives to have no online presence or a work history. Samplesso as a company also has no Linkedin presence which is odd if they are working with such big name brands like Guerlain, Charlotte Tilbury and Lancome.
- Their listed phone number and address are for a virtual office, not a real physical location. I would imagine a big brand might want to talk to a human for their big sampling campaign, right?
- The “human” testimonials on their site, which were uploaded the same day the domain was registered 12-31-2023 and all the files edited on 12-27-2023 via Photoshop on a Windows machine. They also have distortions which are telltale signs of computer generation images and are in the same height and width another telltale sign that it was computer generated as the algorithms that make these images are usually outputting images in the same height and width, in this case 920×920.
- https://samplesso.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/testimonial04.jpg
- https://samplesso.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/testimonial02.jpg
- https://samplesso.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/testimonial01.jpg
- https://samplesso.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/testimonial03.jpg
- Brands supposedly working with Samplesso could not confirm any relationship when contacted on social media the past week. This alone is confirmation that this company is 100% fake.
- Attempts to contact Samplesso for their side of the story resulted in bounced emails.
- Their website is currently broken and throwing a WordPress error after only 3 months of registering the domain name. Not a good sign.
- No one in our Facebook group could confirm receiving anything from Samplesso after doing a poll.
- The content on their website appears to be written by AI tools ChatGPT and the images look like they were generated with the same style of the Dalle3 program.
- The “Parners Dashboard” merely takes you to a WordPress login page, not custom software that would be designed for CPG companies
- And if they had real clients, they would have brand company accounts on their WordPress right? Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they made a custom WordPress sampling plugin, nope. Below are the only two accounts that exist which was verified using their WordPress users endpoint:
- https://samplesso.com/author/samplesso/
- https://samplesso.com/author/sampleoo/
- And if they had real clients, they would have brand company accounts on their WordPress right? Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they made a custom WordPress sampling plugin, nope. Below are the only two accounts that exist which was verified using their WordPress users endpoint:
Some images:
Dalle3 image suspect from their blog, as a Dalle3 user, this is HIGHLY like to be from that. This isn’t a huge deal but it is likely this website was created in a hurry.
About that phone number though..
Bounced email:
Their broken website, the error that started this post:
Distorted jewelry, really weird teeth, white creamy sweat, huh? Fake people confirmed.
Based on this evidence, we can confidently say that Samplesso is a fake company running a scam of some sort and likely will not respect your personal information. Avoid it at all costs. If you’ve already signed up, be prepared for an influx of spam emails and be cautious about clicking any links or providing personal information. Stay safe out there, freebie hunters!
I suspect this scammer had a new years resolution to scam people considered it was started on 12-31-23 and like many resolutions, hopefully this scammer gives up.
-John ‘Samples’ Clark
