Zijtest.com Scam Store: A Fake ZARA Website

Zijtest.com is a scam website that offers to buy items from ZARA at exceptionally cheap 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 about this site as a legitimate one. After ordering goods from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will show the concerning indicators regarding the Zijtest.com store, the way this fraud operates, and explain how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in future.

Zijtest.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Zijtest.com may initially appear like a authentic discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Unfair advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, absence of user support and user feedback – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.

Zijtest.com Scam

By purchasing items on websites like Zijtest.com, it is uncertain that you will acquire the items you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 scenarios characteristic 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 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 especially common case when ordering from websites that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the purchase look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the actual item, cheats may send a random item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a branded one, a scratched aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn quite inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most typical outcome when ordering goods from sites like Zijtest.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scam sites do not aim to exist for a long time, scams are not wasting time creating even a slight visibility of legitimacy.

Zijtest.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Zijtest.com runs a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post huge amounts of promotions on social media, 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms benevolent, 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 consumers are on the site, tricksters do their best to make the users 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 strange 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 deceivers, “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 regarding the site being a scam, 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 swindlers with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Zijtest.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the scam site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is fraudulent without risking your money. Fortunately, frauds 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 feedback. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack customer reviews shortly after the start, since there were only a few clients 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 phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any unclear or balderdash reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on dishonest 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% discounts are not viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, fraudulent 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 discount has its sensible limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes deceptive sites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud 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 site will likely 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 number to contact them, there is a huge possibility that these emails and numbers will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

As scammers tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned 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 services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. All of them though have the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: these methods do not suppose any refund options. And this is what attracts scammers – once you paid for the order, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some websites may also ask for payments in crypto, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different frauds.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scammers most likely don’t have any real items on hand, they are not able to shoot unique pictures. Thus their only option is simply to hijack these images elsewhere. When frauds market identical goods on different sites, 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

Scammers do not copy only pictures. As scammers may scam people on the same topic again and again, they reuse the same site design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search on Google advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such scams pretty easy, but criminals who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Zijtest.com Scam