Overview

• Verbraucherzentrale groups report a surge in suspicious heating-fuel sites and list recent examples such as heizoel-standard.de, hill-heizoel.de, brennstoffe-versand.de, heizoel-kalkulator.de, heizoel-freunde.de and pellet-profi24.de.
• Red flags include unrealistically low prices, a missing or incomplete Impressum, acceptance of only prepayment or cryptocurrency, suspicious or absent reviews and conspicuous language errors.
• Fraudsters often claim availability for fuels that appear sold out elsewhere to pressure consumers into quick purchases.
• Legitimate suppliers typically offer safer payment options like credit cards or PayPal, and buyers are advised not to use PayPal’s Friends and Family option for purchases.
• Victims are urged to contact their bank immediately to try to stop or reverse payments, save all order records and file a police report, including via the Onlinewache portal.