Since 2023, Cobble Hill has been actively battling scammers on social media.
These scammers have infringed upon our copyright by stealing our logo and using it in FAKE ADS on Facebook and Instagram. They tout "clearance prices", "end of year sale", "last chance", "free gift", and sadly, many people have fallen for this scam. We're quite certain that some of the people who write to us saying they have been scammed are part of the scam ring as they just seem to be phishing for information from our customer care team. It's as if they want to see if their scam complaints have reached our ears yet; how long do they have before they need to shut down and pop up somewhere else. Or find out about our order process. It's disgusting.
What can you do if you have been scammed?
The best recourse will be to report it to your bank immediately. It's also a good idea to warn your friends and family. Do not continue to visit the fake website as you may accidentally click a link or photo that is a virus or malicious. In fact, there is a good chance that the website has vanished as these scammers set up shop and move on to build their next scam site.
What are signs that you can look for to avoid these scams?
It's simple. Cobble Hill does not advertise on Instagram or Facebook.
So, if you see an ad posing as Cobble Hill with our logo as their profile photo - avoid the ad!
See what our About->Page Transparency looks like below. You can see our company name in the website address, our official Page ID, our creation date being 2010, and whether we're running any ads. If you check the profile ID of some of these "pop-up profiles" with 35 followers, you'll see they were created recently.
Below is a FAKE PROFILE PAGE. Every ad on Facebook is published by a Profile ID. We discovered this one by checking the Facebook Ads Library and seeing the Profile ID. Clicking the profile ID takes you to a fake profile acting like they're us, but with a foreign phone number, generic email and the wrong name. These scammers are getting slicker though and may start to write information that looks similar to ours - so remember, we don't advertise on Facebook or Instagram.
You can report these pages!
These are examples of FAKE ADS.
1. We are Cobble Hill, not Cobblestone Hill.
2. Fake ad below using our logo, our correctly spelled name, and yet the website address is totally bogus. Pay attention to the web address the ad lures you to. Notice this is advertised on four different platforms.
Look at the URL (the website address) that you're being lured to. Cobble Hill only has two websites with .com and .ca domains:
www.cobblehillpuzzles.com (For US)
www.cobblehillpuzzles.ca (For Canada)
We do not have other websites. So, if you see our logo and the URL takes you to any place other than the two listed websites, it's a scam.
Make sure that the URL does not have an extra letter that fools you into believing it's our address - like and extra "b" or extra "l" or extra "z", or absence of one of the letters, etc. It should only have the top level domain of .com or .ca, nothing else. Be vigilant and scrutinize! This is not only your money, but your personal information! Don't give it away so quickly.
