You may have noticed that a scammer is impersonating our business online right now. They are using the name Alderspring Ranch, our logo, our images, and text from our website. They are running ads on social media (primarily Instagram and Facebook). If you place an order from this fake impersonator website, you’ll get nothing! We are doing all we can to get their website and social media ads taken down!
If you would like to help us get these scammers taken down, click here to get a list of links to places you can report them. If we get enough people reporting the scam site, it will get blacklisted by google.
On this page you can find out how you can tell if you are shopping on the real Alderspring site or the fake site, how to know if you’ve been scammed and what to do next, and how to help us take these thieves down!
Is the real Alderspring website still secure?
Yes, our main website at Alderspring.com and our online store at ShopAlderspring.com are both still completely secure and safe. Once you’re on our website, the scammer cannot redirect you to their website. Our website has not been hacked. The scammer is impersonating our website by using photos and images stolen from our website, but they don’t have access to the backend of our website and have only stolen information and photos that are publicly visible. They have no access to our actual website.
Is my credit card info and data safe if I order from you?
We use a secure payment platform called Shopify. Shopify hosts our store website at ShopAlderspring.com. We’ve contacted Shopify support to let them know about the scammer and they have confirmed that our website is still completely secure. The scammer has no access to any of your private data, credit card information, address, or anything else. Our store website at ShopAlderspring.com is secure and safe for you to order from. You can click here to be taken to our legitimate online store.
How do I know if I’m shopping on the real Alderspring store and not on the scam website?
The scammer has made a fake website that looks like ours, but there are still some easy ways to confirm that you are on our website and not the scam website. Here are a few things to check.
- The address (url) at the top of the page of our online store will begin with either “Alderspring.com” or “ShopAlderspring.com” as shown in the screenshot below. We have 2 websites, Alderspring.com (our main site) and our store, ShopAlderspring.com. Both are legitimate, and if you are at that URL, you are on our real website. Once you’ve confirmed you’re on the right site, you can shop without further concern. You don’t have to keep re-checking the address at the top. The scammer has no access to our website and is unable to redirect you from our website to their fake website.
- The scam website currently is listing beef for extremely cheap prices (less than $1.00 per pound). Our prices start at around $10 per pound for bulk beef and go up from there. Our prices have not changed in months. If it looks too good to be true, it is! Below are some screenshots from the scam website showing what it will look like.
- Update 1-20-2024! The scammer has created a new URL for their impoersonator store. The new URL is “AlderspringRanch-Sale[dot]Com.” They’ve made the new URL because we finally had some success getting the old website flagged as suspicious by Google. Please continue to help us report the old URL and this new one (how to report is covered further down the page). The scam website at the new URL looks exactly the same as the one shown in the screenshots below.
- ADS. If you came to the website via a social media ad, it’s fake. We don’t run social media ads. If you’re not sure you’re on the right website, just type “Alderspring Ranch” into a google search instead and click through to the Alderspring website that shows up there. We show up in google search results for Alderspring Ranch and the scam website does not appear at all, so when you get to our website from Google, you’re on the real site.
How do I know if I’ve been scammed?
- Many people are reporting to us that they don’t receive an order confirmation email from the scam site. We always send order confirmation emails after someone purchases from our website.
- If you paid about $1.00/pound for the beef, you were definitely scammed. Our prices start at around $10/lb. No legitimate small ranch like us could ever afford to sell beef at $1.00/lb.
- If the payment shows up under a weird name on your credit card statement, you were scammed. Payments to our legitimate online store will show up as “Alderspring.com,” “Alderspring,” “Shopify,” or “Shopify Payments” (Shopify is the secure platform that hosts our online store, so if you see a charge titled “Shopify” after placing an order on our website, it is a legitimate charge).
What do I do if I’ve been scammed?
- Immediately contest those charges on your credit card by calling your credit card company or filing a report. Most of the victims of the scam that we’ve spoken to were able to get their money back when they reported it to their credit card company quickly.
- Be sure to list the charge as “fraudulent” or “phishing” in your report. Multiple reports of fraud will help get the fake website shut down.
- Report the scammer to the FTC here.
- Report the scammer to the Internet Crime Complaint Center here.
- Please make sure in your reports that you report “AlderspringRanch[dot]com,” “Alderspring-Sale[dot]com” or “AlderspringRanch-Sale[dot]Com” as the fraudulent website (the scammer is now running three websites, so just enter one of these. It’s okay if you don’t remember which of the 3 you were scammed at. It’s all the same scammer). Please do not use the URL of our legitimate website. If you report our real website, it will only contribute further damage to our business and reputation and will not harm the scammers in any way.
- Please don’t leave a negative review on our website or Google profile. These scammers are destroying our hard-won reputation because people who’ve been scammed google our name, find our google profile, and leave a bad review blaming us for the scam. Leaving a bad review doesn’t harm the scammer at all; it only impacts our legitimate business that we have spent years of hard work building. Unfortunately in cases like this, the scammer often gets off scot-free with a load of cash, and the real business faces the consequences.
How do I help get the scammer shut down?
- You can report their ads to Facebook. If you see any ads under the name Alderspring Ranch on Facebook or Instagram, report them as fraudulent. We never run ads on social media, so if you see an ad, it’s the scammer, not us.
- You can report them to Godaddy, which is where their domain is registered. Click here to visit the Godaddy report form and fill it out as shown in the screenshot below. The scammer has 3 domains currently using our name. Just add your email address and type in “AlderspringRanch[dot]com,” “AlderspringRanch-Sale[dot]Com”, and “Alderspring-Sale[dot]com”. Put a comma between each to separate the URLs. Remember, you have to submit the form separately for each domain.
- You can report them to Google’s Phishing form here. The three URLs the scammer is using are “AlderspringRanch[dot]com,” “AlderspringRanch-Sale[dot]Com”, and “Alderspring-Sale[dot]com.”
- You can report their fake Facebook page. Click this link to go to their Facebook page and report it to Facebook as fraudulent. You can see on the page they have literally used a photo of our family that they stole from our social media. Facebook seems to take little action in these cases, but if enough people report the page for fraud, they will have to do something.
- You can report them to the FTC at this link. You can report the scammer whether you’ve been scammed or not, but if you have been scammed have the information about the scam accessible so you can report those details. The three URLs the scammer is using are “AlderspringRanch[dot]com,” “AlderspringRanch-Sale[dot]Com”, and “Alderspring-Sale[dot]com.” You can only report one domain per report, so either do a separate report for all three or if you are short on time, just pick one and report it. Any report helps!
- You can report the scam website as unsafe to Google. Just go to this form and enter “AlderspringRanch[dot]com,” “AlderspringRanch-Sale[dot]com”, and “Alderspring-Sale[dot]com.” You have to report each one in a separate report, but each report only takes a second.
- You can report the scam website as unsafe to Microsoft. Click here to go to the form, and enter “AlderspringRanch[dot]com,” “AlderspringRanch-Sale[dot]com”, and “Alderspring-Sale[dot]com” as the URl you are reporting. As before, you have to enter a separate report for each website.
- Report the website AlderspringRanch[dot]com, AlderspringRanch-Sale[dot]com, and Alderspring-Sale[dot]com as unsafe to Norton (antivirus company, so if a user has Norton on their computer, a warning will appear if the visitor goes to the suspicious website). Select “phishing” as the crime.
Thank you for your help reporting these thieves!
We’re pretty mad, actually. We’ve been selling online since 2004. We’ve spent the last 20 years building our reputation. We’ve put our hearts, souls, and literal blood, sweat, and tears into this business. We’ve persisted through years of extreme adversity and made many personal sacrifices. And it’s so frustrating to have bottom-feeders like this steal from people, exploit our effort and work, and in the end likely walk away with no consequences.
Thank you for helping us by reporting them, and please don’t give your money to these scammers!