How to Spot a Scam

*Advert uses computer generated voice

*Advert uses a ton of stock images

*Advert feeds on the issues pretty much everyone is facing right now – higher energy costs, higher fuel costs, higher food costs, dieting etc.

*Advert attaches a time warning – “delay and you’ll miss out” or “offer ends today”

*Advert links to a URL that isn’t particularly memorable (like porta-heat-your-home.com) – this is probably because the websites only live for long enough to take your money and then disappear before you get your product

*Reviews on the website are fake. There’s no way to see all the reviews. They’ll throw in some 4 stars to make it feel genuine but won’t actually show those 4* reviews or let you see them

*There’s no VAT number on the website footer (though not always needed, it’s usually another tell tale with everything else above that there’s a scam going down)

*The contact page goes nowhere, or to a 3rd party distributor company that’s registered outside the UK. This one is in the USA.

*There’s usually a long chain of different companies until you actually find the one involved, this one is PortaHeat -> Techie Select -> Beauty Warehouse -> Capital Administrators LLC

*Googling the product name and the word scam reveals a lot of results that are actually adverts that feature the word “scam” in the title, but this is purely to suppress the ability of a post like this being found

*Advert makes bold claims without any evidence to back it up. They don’t even use ‘woolly words’ that insinuate a lie, they out right lie.

Let’s take the 2c to 23c temperature rise for a room in 2 minutes…

This device plugs into a UK outlet, so a maximum of 13Amps (230V * 13Amps = just shy of 3kW). The link on the ad helpfully says the device falls far short of this, running at 500W (less than a typical plug in heater) yet claims to be 90% (not up to, just an outright lie of 90% less energy used) more efficient (we’ll come to that in a moment).

Given the device is claimed it can work in a room up to 50m2 (I’d have imagined a room to be measured in m3, but ignore that for now), let’s be generous and do calculations on a room half that volume. Length – 5m

Width – 5m

Area – 25m2

Assuming a height of 2m, 50m3

Putting that info into a BTU calculator you’d need 3330 BTUs or 976 Watts to heat the room. So can we heat it on 500W – perhaps, eventually, but not in 2 minutes. It’d take the 18 year old version of me to pull out A level physics books and work out the specific heat capacity etc to come up with exactly how long it’d take to get the room of that size from 2c to 23c using 500w but the 30+ year old me knows it ain’t going to be 2 minutes.

Update – 25/09/2022 – This scam is also doing the rounds as sponsored ads on websites. A screenshot shared by someone else to Facebook has been added to the gallery, this one being “German radiant heaters that consume almost zero energy” under the brand “InstaHeat”. Again, the laws of thermodynamics or consumer rights clearly don’t apply to these scammers.

Update – 26/09/2022 – The gift that keeps giving. The ad now shows on the default Microsoft Edge browser home screen when opening a new tab. This one is from “PureCare” and being sold as the “Heater Pro X”. The irony here is that the scammer is calling out scammers, stating “We’ve already seen scammers trying to order 10 at a time, only to resell them on Amazon or ebay for 10X the price once the official site is sold out…”. They also use the fantastic “limited stock” / “limited offer” scam wording that I’m fairly sure is illegal, if not at least immoral. I tried to report to Action Fraud, but their website only allows reports of things where there’s been a victim, so will only take action AFTER a crime has taken place I guess. They are also more interested in capturing information on my gender, disability and sexual orientation rather than asking for the actual details of the fraud.

Doing a reverse image search suggests this scam also runs under the product name “Orbis” and “Orbisheater” – https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/orbisheater.pro

Update – 27/09/2022 – Would you believe it? This time, “lovetechnew.com” are trying to scam people with the “HeatPal” product. The inventor was previously Tom, a middle aged dude. Now it’s Martin, a young engineer. Seems the pit of lies and fraud is endless with these companies. I’m not even trying to find these ads – I was simply watching a video of Spitfires at Duxford and this scam pre-rolled on YouTube (who frankly are complicit in the scam by allowing the ads to run on their platform).

Update – 28/09/2022 – This one is Leicestershire Live claiming you can save on your bills using this product from Amazon. I wonder how much they were paid to run this advert? It’s amazing that their ‘journalists’ didn’t have any critical thinking on this ‘article’ before they published it. It’s akin to having half the chocolate so you can eat twice as much!!

Update 29/09/2022 – Two ads, one immediately after the other when loading a video on hurricane Ian. Both for the same product ran by two different scammers. First up “cool-tech-today” with their “HeatFiniti” advertised by “FLEX LIMITED” and second was “buyinstantheat” advertised by “A FLAME LTD” from the UK. Oh, and Tim has changed his name to Tucker Johnson, a 42 year old jet engineer. Martin either grew up fast or likes wearing makeup to make him look much older.

Update 13/10/2022 – Still doing the rounds. This morning I got a new one from “Heat Review Guide” featuring Tucker Johnson (although now called George Williams, a jet engineer from Minneapolis – not Scotland). The product, “Alpha Heat”. This time the video has ditched the robotic voice and went with a Scottish voice actor I presume. I wonder if the scammers are reading this post for inspiration on making their scam work better? Strangely, YouTube usually shows who’s running the ad when you click the “i” button but this one has no name.