Minequartz.com Review: Real Store or A Scam? Read This

Minequartz.com is a scam website that offers to purchase decorative items at exceptionally cheap prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a ploy to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. After 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 highlight the concerning indicators regarding the Minequartz.com store, the way this deception operates, and teach how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in upcoming times.

Minequartz.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Minequartz.com may initially seem like a legit discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Questionable advertising methods, extremely low prices, lack of customer support and user testimonials – this site accomplishes the scam bingo right away.

Minequartz.com Scam

By shopping on websites like Minequartz.com, it is uncertain that you will obtain the items you’ve ordered. More commonly, it results in one of 3 instances characteristic for scam sites.

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

Wrong item. To make the purchase look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the delivered item, frauds may ship a incidental item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a dirty aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn quite inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most usual scenario when ordering from sites like Minequartz.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply disappear. As scam sites do not aim to exist for a long time, frauds are not wasting time creating even a vague semblance of legitimacy.

Minequartz.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Minequartz.com runs a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It usually consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post massive amounts of advertisements 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 genuine, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become especially convincing during major events that boost people’s interest in shopping, like Halloween, Black Friday, Christmas, etc. Sometimes, they mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

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

Payments are done in a strange manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, swindlers 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 fraudsters, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.

Step 3 – Vanish. Once tricksters get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user reports about the site being fraudulent, they simply vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people know about the deceptive activity, the profits will dry up, leaving fraudsters with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Minequartz.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the fraud site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is deceptive 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 purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack user feedback shortly after the start, as there were not many buyers yet. For that reason, this sign is not stand-alone and requires confirmation by other signs or indicators.

Definitely not generic comments generated by AI

However, when you face phishy-looking reviews that have nothing to do with what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any blurred or absurdity reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on scam websites 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 trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, deceptive websites have the initial price low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be outrageous, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold for cheap, but every discount has its sensible limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes deceptive websites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the customers, 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 likely have no support contacts whatsoever.

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

When they offer a contact email, or even a phone to reach them out, there is a huge possibility that these numbers and emails will be unresponsive to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.

As scammers often reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a completely different website, be sure you are 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 lot of legit services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. All of them though have the same feature I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what makes it so attractive to scammers – once you paid for the order, nothing will help you to get the money back.

Some websites may also offer payments in cryptocurrency, which feature even less control. While cryptocurrency transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different rascals.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scammers are unlikely to have any items on hand, they are not able to shoot unique pictures. Thus their option is to steal these images from other sites. When rascals sell the same items on different sites, you can find such pics on similarly-looking scam pages. By searching for the image on Google, you can prove the uniqueness of an image.

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

6. Design repeats the one of a different page

This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As frauds may scam people on the same topic repeatedly, they use the same web design under the new address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such frauds particularly easy, but criminals who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Minequartz.com Scam