Tideidea.com Under Investigation – Scam or Legit? Read This

Tideidea.com is a deceptive website that offers to purchase clothes at exceptionally cheap prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is in fact just a narrative to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon placing an order on this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will highlight the red flags regarding the Tideidea.com store, the way this fraud operates, and show how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.

Tideidea.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Tideidea.com may initially look like a genuine discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a brief analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Unfair advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, lack of customer support and customer reviews – this site completes the scam bingo right away.

Tideidea.com Scam

By shopping on pages like Tideidea.com, it is questionable that you will get the goods you’ve ordered. More commonly, it results in one of 3 instances standard for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to imitation items of popular brands, the attribute 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 especially often case when ordering from pages that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the purchase look legit, but spend even less money on the delivered item, frauds may ship a incidental item they have on hand instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a dented aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn quite inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most common outcome when ordering items from websites like Tideidea.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then just vanish. As scam sites are not going to exist for a long time, rascals do not bother themselves with creating even a faint semblance of legitimacy.

Tideidea.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Tideidea.com runs a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with certain 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 the websites do: 90% discounts, free delivery around the world, hurry up to get the deal.

Ads of fraudulent shops posted on different platforms

As users regard ads on the mentioned platforms genuine, they do not suspect 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 customers are on the site, fraudsters do their best to make the customers 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 users stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a curious manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, fraudsters 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 rascals get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user reports regarding the site being a scam, they simply vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people are aware about the dishonest 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 Tideidea.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 deceptive without risking your money. Fortunately, fraudsters 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 feedback. Obviously, even legit shopping sites will lack user feedback when they have just started, since there were just a few consumers 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 indistinct or balderdash reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on scam websites you will get an entire saltcellar. Always search 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 viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, scam websites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be ridiculous, 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.

That factor distinguishes dishonest websites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the customers, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page (if it is present at all) – the page will most likely have no contact info whatsoever.

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

When they offer a contact email, or even a phone to contact them, there is a huge possibility that these contacts will be dead silent to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your inquiry.

As frauds tend to 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 sites that use the same “support email”

4. Payments via payment systems that does not support refunds

This scam indicator is complementary, as there are plenty of genuine shops and services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. Each of the latter has the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: these methods do not suppose any refund options. And this is what attracts scammers – once you’ve sent the money, nothing will help you to get the money back.

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

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scams most likely don’t have any items, they cannot shoot unique pics. Thus their only option is simply to hijack these images elsewhere. When fraudsters offer identical items on different sites, you can find such images on similarly-designed fraudulent sites. 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 scammers may use the same topic again and again, they put the same site design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the copy of the original site. It allows you to uncover such frauds pretty easy, but scammers who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are situations when Tideidea.com website, together with similar scam sites, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are two particular malware types known for such behavior. If you notice excessive amounts of ads in your web browser, have your search inquiries redirected into an unusual search engine and some random pages open time to time, scan your computer with GridinSoft Anti-Malware. This will help you to get rid of annoying promotions and scam sites.

Remove malware with Gridinsoft Anti-Malware

We have also been using this software on our systems ever since, and it has always been successful in detecting viruses. It has blocked the most common adware as shown from our tests with the software, and we assure you that it can remove malware as well as other malware hiding on your computer.

To use Gridinsoft for remove malicious threats, follow the steps below:

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Frequently Asked Questions about the Tideidea.com Scam