I'm on a bit of a fake freebie bender. Last month I discovered the high probability of Samplesso being a fake freebie site. Today, once again, I believe I've discovered that Smplit[.]com is also a fake freebie site.
Before I show my work, I once again want to ask – has any Hiffer actually received one of these freebies over the past five months?! Since October 2023, Smplit has supposedly offered:
- Spa Luxetique Ocean Breeze Shower Mousse.
https://smplit[.]com/spa-luxetique-shower-mousse/
Many freebie sites posted this around October 31, so it's been almost four months since people started requesting it. I even posted it here on HIF – did anybody get it? - Spa Luxetique Lavendar Dream Body Cream
https://smplit[.]com/spa-luxetique-body-cream - Secret Key Glow Lipstick
https://smplit[.]com/secret-key-lipstick
This seems suspect to me now that I notice the Privacy Policy links to Spa Luxetique, even though I don't think they make this brand. - Exrthx Custom Logo 4D Silk Mascara
https://smplit[.]com/exrthx-mascara/
Again, the Privacy Policy links to Spa Luxetique, even though I don't think they make this brand. In fact, I don't even know who owns or makes Exrthx! - Victoria's Fleur Body Mist
https://smplit[.]com/victorias-fleur-body-mist/
This is one of the most recent offers I've come across starting around March 2024.
Again, in the interest of full disclosure, I posted the first four offers listed above to HIF between October 2023 and February 2024. Did anybody actually get these?! I've since removed all of these posts after my investigation.
Why I Think Smplit Contains Fake Freebies
Once again, I'm happy to show my work and walk you through all of the 🚩 that I uncovered regarding this website.
- The company is rather new – the domain was registered, but never used, from 2017-2019. Then it was recently re-registered on 2023-07-21.
- The oldest snapshot from 2023 says they're working with 350 brands right from the start? It also contains a lot of clues about the amateurism of its owner:
- The bottom left says “TheNextTech is a technology-related news and article publishing portal where our techie and non-techie readers, interest in technological stuff, read us with equal curiosity. We hustle to keep them updated.” What does this have to do with samples and who is TheNextTech? It looks like they copied another website's content when setting up Smplit and forgot to change this.
- The original links to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram don't work.
- The email address says [email protected], but actually hyperlinks to a different email. More on this later.
- Their About Us page talks about SampleSpot. Who is this?!
- Their contact page lists the following info (which I'll also address later):
USA
347 Fifth Ave., NY, NY 10016
212-858-9393Canada
32121 McCowan Rd, Scarborough, ON M1S 3Y6
416-572-5222
- The archive snapshot from August 2023 is also revealing. It links to @InfoSmplit, which is a now-suspended Twitter account. It also links to this Facebook page, which was created on August 7, 2023, but didn't begin posting until February 2024.
- It's not until their October 2023 snapshot that we see they've finally cleaned up the branding on their About Us page, as well as their footer info. This is when we see their contact page change as well:
- USA
544 Lockridge Ln
Lawrenceville, Georgia, 30046 - Canada
2643 Enterprise Way
Kelowna, British Columbia, V1X 7Y6 - UK
Unit G4, 38 ST James Street
Weston Super Mare, BS231ST
This is a freaking single family home!
This is a furniture store. They have this exact address listed on their company website.
I think this is a restaurant.
- USA
- The email address listed in their footer says [email protected], yet when clicked it takes you to [email protected] What the what?!? This is also another odd UK connection that raises 🚩 for me.
- Their site currently links to @smplitsamples, which is a brand new account as of February 2024. It had 309 followers when I began researching and has grown to 612, as of publication. However, I strongly believe they purchased the first 300 followers and suspect they purchase an additional 300 followers this month. These accounts all have the tell-tale sign of being bots, which is a username that starts with a name or word and ends with a string of random letters.
- Meanwhile, their Facebook page contains 912 followers, as of publication, almost all of which have Asian names. This again is a tell-tale sign of purchasing low quality, bot followers in bulk, which is aimed at creating a sense of legitimacy to anybody who just looks at the fan count total. This is especially true for a site purporting to have a large US, UK, and Canadian presence that works with 160+ brands and has 700,000+ reviews.
I have screenshotted some of the bots here in case they try to scrub their account.
- The source code from their websites contains meta data that looks to have been copy & pasted from TopSubscriptionBoxes.co.uk.
- The stock artwork on their site appears to come from a blog post from another website in 2017.
I mean, look, at this point it's pretty clear to me that this is a fake freebie site. I feel bad, because unlike the other scam freebie site I exposed recently, Smplit slipped under my radar for much longer. After Juls' death, I kinda went on auto-pilot regarding freebies, because they certainly didn't seem to matter among all my grief. But these two recent investigations of mine have gotten me back on high alert regarding fake freebies!
Again, I'm interested to hear if y'all have received any of their supposed freebies over the past few months! Until I am convinced otherwise, I will withhold any of their future offers and I apologize for not catching this issue earlier.
