Tidepick.com Scam Store: What You Need To Know

Tidepick.com is a deceptive website that offers to purchase items at extremely low prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is in fact just a story 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 warning signs regarding the Tidepick.com site, the way this deception operates, and explain how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.

Tidepick.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Tidepick.com may initially appear like a genuine 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. Unfair advertising methods, extremely low prices, lack of user support and customer testimonials – this site accomplishes the fraud bingo right away.

Tidepick.com Scam

By purchasing items on websites like Tidepick.com, it is questionable that you will obtain the goods you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 instances common for scam sites.

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

Wrong item. To make the trade look legit, but spend even less money on the actual item, scammers may send a incidental item they have on hand instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a branded one, a dented aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn rather inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most usual scenario when ordering from websites like Tidepick.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply disappear. As scam sites are not going to exist for a long time, rascals do not bother themselves with creating even a remote sight of legitimacy.

Tidepick.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Tidepick.com follows 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 abundant amounts of advertisements on online platforms, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say 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 benevolent, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become especially compelling 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 individuals are on the site, deceivers 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 customers stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a quirky manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, tricksters 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 swindlers get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user reports about the site being fraudulent, they just disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals are aware about the dishonest activity, the profits will dry up, leaving fraudsters with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Tidepick.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, 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

Hoax websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with reviews. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack buyer opinions when they have just started, since there were not many clients 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, once you face phishy-looking reviews that have nothing to do with what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any unclear or nonsense reviews that may describe any item sold on the site 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% reductions are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, dishonest websites set the prices 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 reasonable limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes deceptive sites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to rip off the clients, 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 site will 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 to contact them, there is a great possibility that these emails and numbers will be unresponsive to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your inquiry.

As scammers often reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a completely different site, be sure you’re 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 a whole lot of genuine services and shops 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 sites may also offer payments in cryptocurrency, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scammers.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As rascals are unlikely to have any real items, they are not able to make unique pics. Thus their option is to hijack these images elsewhere. When crooks market identical goods on different websites, you can find same pics on similarly-designed scam pages. By reverse image searching 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

Rascals do not steal only pics. As frauds may scam people on the same topic repeatedly, they reuse the same site design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam 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 site you’ve started on. It allows you to uncover such frauds particularly easy, but crooks who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Tidepick.com Scam