The coronavirus pandemic has caused many of us to be become more vigilant than ever before about cleaning and disinfecting our homes and our belongings. This newfound obsession with cleaning has also led to a problem with supply and demand.

Lysol and Clorox brand products have both been proven to be effective at killing SARS-CoV-2 which is the virus that causes COVID-19. That has made the products more popular than ever before, and these brands have had a hard time making enough of their in-demand products at a fast enough rate to keep them on store shelves.

In an effort to find Lysol and Clorox products, such as the popular disinfecting wipes, some consumers have turned to the internet. When familiar shopping sites were out of stock, they turned to less familiar sites to place orders. Unfortunately, some of these sites were started by scammers.

Sites such as clorox-sale.com and lysol-cleaners.com popped up over the summer promising to ship consumers products that were out of stock pretty much everywhere else. It was too good to be true. Customers never received their order of cleaning products. Instead, many of the customers were sent socks.

Not only were the socks not what the consumers ordered, but the fact that they were sent a product made it more difficult for consumers to fight the charges with their credit card company.

The FTC says that customers report that some of the websites disappeared just days or weeks after they were created. When customers went back to the website after placing an order, the site was gone. Instead, the scammers moved on and created new URLs.

There are a total of 25 websites that the FTC identified as counterfeit. The FTC has not clarified if the websites were created in the United States or another country. 

The FTC warns consumers, “If a seller seems to have items out of stock everywhere else, do an online search for complaints about the seller or website before you buy.”

According to the FTC, this is the entire list of websites that were shut down and found to be counterfeit: 

cleanyos.com

arlysol.com

broclea.com

cadclea.com

cleancate.com

cleankler.com

cleanula.com

clean-sale.com

clean-sell.com

clorox-sale.com

clorox-sales.com

cloroxstore.com

crlysol.com

elysol.com

littletoke.com

lybclean.com

lysoiclean.com

lysol-clean.com

lysol-cleaners.com

lysol-free.com

lysolsales.com

lysolservicebest.com

lysol-sell.com

lysol-wipe.com

thaclean.com