Alternazeor.com Scam Alert: Beware of Counterfeit Products and More

Alternazeor.com is a deceptive website that offers to buy various clothing at unusually discounted prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is actually just a narrative to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon placing an order on this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will show the red flags regarding the Alternazeor.com shop, the way this fraud operates, and explain how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in future.

Alternazeor.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Alternazeor.com may initially appear like a authentic discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Unfair advertising methods, extremely low prices, absence of user support and customer reviews – this site accomplishes the fraud bingo right away.

Alternazeor.com Scam

By purchasing on pages like Alternazeor.com, it is improbable that you will receive the goods you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 cases common for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to fraudulent items of popular brands, the grade will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may mention about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a particularly often case when ordering from websites that sell baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the transaction look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the actual item, cheats may ship a incidental item they have instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a dented aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn rather inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most frequent outcome when ordering items from pages like Alternazeor.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply disappear. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, scammers do not bother themselves with creating even a slight visibility of legitimacy.

Alternazeor.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Alternazeor.com follows a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post huge amounts of promotions on online platforms, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say exactly the same things as their sites do: 90% discounts, free delivery around the world, hurry up to get the deal.

Ads of fraudulent shops posted on different platforms

As users deem ads on the mentioned platforms benevolent, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become particularly persuasive during major events that boost people’s interest in shopping, like Halloween, Black Friday, Christmas, etc. Sometimes, they disguise themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once users are on the website, fraudsters do their best to make the users buy something. Impossibly good deals, additional discounts, free shipping, bright and blinking “Order Now” buttons that are just everywhere – they use every single method possible. And this works out – uninformed consumers stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a unusual manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, deceivers offer using direct bank transfers, Venmo or CashApp. Thing is, the latter do not provide any refunds, regardless of the circumstances. Even when you can prove that the transaction went to tricksters, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.

Step 3 – Vanish. Once crooks get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user reports about the site being fraudulent, they just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers are aware about the dishonest activity, the profits will dry up, leaving swindlers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Alternazeor.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the hoax site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is fraudulent without risking your money. Fortunately, scams do not bother themselves with creating well-rounded disguises, so the same red flags repeat from one site to another.

1. Fake or absent reviews

Scam websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any online reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even legit shopping sites will lack customer reviews shortly after the start, since there were just a few buyers yet. For that reason, this sign is not stand-alone and must be confirmed with other signs or indicators.

Definitely not generic comments generated by AI

However, when you face unrealistic reviews that have nothing to do with what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any unclear or nonsense reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on deceptive sites you will get an entire saltcellar. Do not hesitate searching for reviews on Google – this may save your money.

2. Unbelievably high discounts/low prices

No merchants will sell goods at loss for themselves. 70%, 80%, 90% markdowns are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, fraudulent sites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be absurd, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold at a low price, but every discount has its sane limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes fraudulent websites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the clients, there’s no need to bother about answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page (if it is present at all) – the page will most likely have no support contacts at all.

Typically for fraudulent websites, the “About us” column is completely empty

When they offer an email, or even a phone number to reach them out, there is a great possibility that these contacts will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your inquiry.

As scammers tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a different website, be sure you’re facing a blatant scam.

A chain of scam websites that use the same “support email”

4. Payments via payment systems that does not support refunds

This scam indicator is complementary, as there are a whole lot of legit services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. All of them though have the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: these methods do not suppose any refund options. And this is what makes it so attractive to scammers – once you’ve sent the money, nothing will help you to get the money back.

Some sites may also ask for payments in crypto, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scams.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scams most likely don’t have any goods, they cannot shoot unique pics. Thus their option is to steal these images elsewhere. When scammers offer the same items on different sites, you can find same pics on similarly-designed fraudulent sites. By searching for the image on Google, you can prove whether the image is unique or not.

Image duplicates on another scam site, as well as on Amazon and Walmart sites

6. Design repeats the one of a different page

Rascals do not steal only pics. As scammers may use the same topic again and again, they reuse the same web design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the identical copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such frauds particularly easy, but scoundrels who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Alternazeor.com Scam