Zhuanshops.fun is a scam website that offers to purchase decorative items at unusually discounted prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a narrative to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon ordering from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.
In this article, I will show the concerning indicators regarding the Zhuanshops.fun site, the way this scam operates, and show how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in future.
Zhuanshops.fun Site – Scam Overview
As I said, Zhuanshops.fun may initially look like a legit discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Questionable advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, absence of customer support and customer reviews – this site completes the fraud bingo right away.
| Website | Zhuanshops.fun |
| Hosting | AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc. United States, San Francisco |
| IP Address | 104.17.232.29 |
| Threat Type | Scam/Fraud |
| Scam Type | Fraudulent/Scam online shop |
Zhuanshops.fun Scam
By purchasing on sites like Zhuanshops.fun, it is unlikely that you will receive the goods you’ve ordered. More typically, 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 imitation items of popular brands, the characteristic 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 common case when ordering from websites that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.
Wrong item. To make the transaction look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the delivered item, scammers may send a incidental item they have instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a new one, a scratched aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn really inventive in that case.
Nothing at all. This is the most common outcome when ordering goods from pages like Zhuanshops.fun. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely disappear. As scam sites do not aim to exist for a long time, fraudsters do not bother themselves with creating even a slight semblance of legitimacy.
Zhuanshops.fun scam – How does it work?
As any fraud, Zhuanshops.fun 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 abundant amounts of promotions 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 benign, 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 mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.
Step 2 – Take the Money. Once consumers are on the site, 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 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, 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 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 complaints and user reports about the site being a scam, they just disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals know about the fraudulent activity, the profits will dry up, leaving swindlers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.
Why is Zhuanshops.fun 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, 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
Hoax 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 legit shopping sites will lack buyer opinions shortly after the start, since there were not many 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, once you face unrealistic reviews that have nothing to do with what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any vague or gibberish 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. 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 Thanksgiving day. In some cases, dishonest 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 for cheap, but every sell-off has its sensible limits.
3. No customer support.
That factor distinguishes deceptive websites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to rip off the buyers, 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 contact info at all.
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 contacts will be unresponsive to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.
As frauds often reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a completely 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 complementary, as there are plenty of trustworthy services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. Each of the latter has the same feature 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 paid for the order, there’s no way to get the money back.
Some websites 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 scammers most likely don’t have any real items on hand, they cannot create unique pictures. Thus their option is simply to hijack these images elsewhere. When scams offer the same goods on different websites, you can find such pics 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 rascals may scam people on the same topic again and again, they use the same site design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam 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 makes uncovering such scams particularly easy, but criminals who create them never aim at cautious users.
Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design
