Zenteajourney.com Fraud Warning: Don’t Fall for Their Deceptive Tactics

Zenteajourney.com is a fraudulent website that offers to buy tea 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 story to make you think this site is legitimate. After ordering goods from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will demonstrate the concerning indicators regarding the Zenteajourney.com store, the way this deception operates, and teach how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.

Zenteajourney.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Zenteajourney.com may initially seem like a authentic discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Unfair advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of customer support and customer reviews – this site completes the fraud bingo right away.

Zenteajourney.com Scam

By purchasing on websites like Zenteajourney.com, it is improbable that you will obtain the items you’ve ordered. More frequently, 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 quality 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 notably often case when ordering from sites that offer baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the trade look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the delivered item, cheats may send a accidental item they have on hand instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a dirty aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn really inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most common situation when ordering goods from pages like Zenteajourney.com. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scam sites do not aim to exist for a long time, scammers do not bother themselves with creating even a remote semblance of legitimacy.

Zenteajourney.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Zenteajourney.com follows 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 huge amounts of marketing 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 consider ads on the mentioned platforms benevolent, 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 individuals are on the website, fraudsters do their best to make the individuals 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 individuals 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, 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 scammers, “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 people know about the deceptive activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving cheats with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Zenteajourney.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

Hoax websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack customer reviews shortly after the start, as there were just a few 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, once you face phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or nonsense reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on fraudulent sites 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 trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, scam sites have the initial price 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 at a low price, but every discount has its rational limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes fraudulent websites from the benign 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 – the page will have no contact info 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 chance that these emails and numbers will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

As frauds tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a totally different website, be sure that this is 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 not a guarantee, as there are a whole lot of legit shops and services 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’ve sent the money, there’s no way to get the money back.

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

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scams most likely don’t have any goods, they cannot make unique pictures. Thus their option is to steal these images from other sites. When rascals offer identical items on different sites, you can find same images on similarly-looking scam pages. 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

This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As rascals may use the same topic again and again, they put the same web design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search on Google advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the copy of the original site. It allows you to unveil such scams pretty easy, but scammers who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are cases when Zenteajourney.com website, together with similar scam pages, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are two particular malware types that aim specifically at such purposes. If you see excessive ads in your web browser, have your search inquiries redirected in an unusual search engine and some random pages open time to time, scan your system 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 Zenteajourney.com Scam