The common tricks
Red tea has fewer tricks than most categories, because the margins are thinner and the tea is easier to judge.
The commonest is selling an ordinary tea at a single origin price, which is puffery rather than fraud.
Estate names and flushes carry real premiums, and both get attached to commodity tea regularly.
The second is old stock sold as new. Red tea keeps well enough that this is easy to get away with.
A harvest date quietly replaced by a packing date is the standard version of it.
The third is grade inflation, with a broken grade described in the language of a whole one.
The fourth is dust and fannings blended into a tea sold as leaf, which shows up as a bitter cup.
The fifth is smoke, used to cover a tea that has gone flat or was dried badly.
The sixth is the health claim, which is marketing rather than fraud, but points at the same sellers.
None of these are dramatic, and all of them cost the buyer money rather than doing any harm.
At 4 grams a cup, a 250 gram bag is about 60 cups, so a small lie per gram adds up to real money.
Why they work
Red tea is bought in larger quantities than most, so a small lie per gram adds up.
Most buyers drink it with milk, which hides a great deal of what the leaf is doing.
An estate name is unenforceable outside the country of origin, and few buyers check one.
Dates are easy to move, since red tea does not taste obviously old the way a green tea does.
Grade names are confusing by design, and OP, BOP and the rest mean nothing to most buyers.
Dust is invisible in a sealed bag and only shows itself when you brew the tea.
Smoke reads as character rather than as a fault, which is why it is used so often.
Health claims work because they sell tea to people who are not really buying tea.
The tea is cheap enough that nobody bothers to complain, and that is the quiet part of it.
All of which means the buyer has to do the checking, because nobody else will.
Defence
Taste it black before you buy it, whatever you plan to do with it at home.
Ask for the estate and the flush, and expect both in one sentence.
Check the harvest date rather than the packing date, since the two are often a year apart.
Look at the leaf for even particle size, which is what grade actually describes.
Brew it and check for bitterness that never resolves, which is the signature of dust.
Buy from an importer who names the estate on the invoice rather than only on the bag.
Compare two sellers at the same stated grade, which exposes grade inflation immediately.
Ignore health claims entirely, and treat them as a reason to look elsewhere.
Four minutes at 100 degrees is the standard brew, and a tea that is harsh at four minutes has something to hide.
Keep a note of price per gram, because value is where these tricks actually land.
Buy a house blend for daily use and a named single origin for interest, and judge them separately.
Two cups a day is roughly 500 grams in six months, which is the quantity worth checking properly.
When in doubt
When you cannot verify the origin, pay the blend price, because that is what it is.
An unnamed Darjeeling is worth a generic Darjeeling price rather than an estate price.
Old stock is worth less than new stock, whatever the tin says about it.
Buy less of it, since red tea is cheap enough that small quantities are not a penalty.
Ask what the seller drinks themselves, which cuts through most of the description.
If a listing is long on adjectives and short on names, dates and grades, look elsewhere.
A very cheap single origin is a blend, and a very expensive blend is a story.
Do not buy a kilo of anything you have not tasted first.
There is more red tea in the world than anyone could drink, so there is no need to gamble.
Doubt here costs you a cup of tea, and certainty bought on faith costs a good deal more.
A Darjeeling picked in June has about nine months at its best, so the harvest date matters more than the grade.