Whether you are shopping for the holiday seasons, a special birthday gift, or just trying to get deals online, you would do well to keep the following tips in mind. As e-commerce has exploded, the opportunities for scams, ripoffs, and general disappointments online have become rife. There are many horror stories of people ordering products and services and being scammed outright. In those cases, the product or service did not exist. Even if it did exist, there are still many horror stories of people getting misbranded or mislabeled materials. There are also numerous online misrepresentations of broken products being sold as fully working products, or refurbished or used products being sold as new products. The list is endless. In reality, the shapes online e-commerce scams take are only limited by the imaginations of the scammers. There are many scammers not just in the U.S., Canada or Europe but from all corners of the world.
The old maxim of “buyer beware” cannot be emphasized than now. If you are looking for a pleasant online shopping experience, follow the tips below. These tips do not just apply to established shopping sites. They also apply to new or upstart e-commerce sites. Do not limit their applicability to shopping sites per se. These tips also apply to informal shopping sites. Informal shopping sites are sites like multiply.com where anybody could set up an online catalogue. This also applies to blogs where a blogger would offer specialized products or services just advertised solely through that blog. The bottom line is that if you are buying anything online, these tips would help you avoid becoming one of the sad victims of online e-commerce fraud.
1. Don’t just rely on the search listing – check out the site that has the listing
Many people go by instinct when shopping online. If they see that the website sells a particular product or service that they are looking for, they automatically whip out their credit card and place an order. This could be a fatal mistake to your finances and peace of mind because there are many fake commerce sites out there that are fronts for stealing personal financial information like credit card numbers. There are many cases of shopping sites, blogs or informal shopping sites existing solely just to facilitate identity theft. While much progress has been made to establish some sense of security in terms of online sales, there are still too many scammers out there that would target your personal financial information through a whole variety of means. They have no compunction. They have no limits regarding how they are going to steal your identity. Be very careful who you trust with this sensitive information. You can go a long way in protecting yourself by merely checking out the site. This might sound simple enough, but unfortunately many online shoppers bypass this. As long as they see the product or service that they are interested in, they buy immediately. They do not even check out the site. They do not even do a preliminary due diligence or quick background check. They just dive in and hope for the best. This can cause you a lot of money, waste your effort and cause you peace of mind down the road. Before all else, check out the site.
Tips for checking site credibility: Size and type of e-commerce site
What should you be checking for? First, compare the size of the site. Is it a blog from somebody selling custom cartoons? Is it other custom service or product? Is it an actual stand alone e-commerce site with its own catalog and order fulfillment process? Check out what the site is about. Look at the other pages like about us, corporate information and investor relations. The more pages you can access and quickly read that would tell you regarding the background of the people or organization behind a website, the better. Scam outfits normally do post any information about their organization or the person behind it. A big red flag is there is no about us content, contact information or company information page. Be very careful of these websites. By no means are we saying that you should not trust them at all, but the absence of just this bare minimum of disclosure and transparency should raise red flags and should make you ask questions. There are some legitimate situations where a product provider or a service provider would dispense with having these pages. This applies mostly to a freelance service provider’s page on Blogger or other free website services. It could also be the home page of someone who makes custom products from home. In many of these situations, they dispense with those core requirements most common e-commerce sites follow. If you come across a website that does not have these pages, do not eliminate them immediately from your list. Try to size up the site. Is it a company that is offering a service or a product or is it an individual provider? If it is an individual and it is custom product or custom service that they just do as a favor, their lack of about us content, corporate information or other information pages is forgivable especially if the prices are quite low and the product or service is quite rare. However, if it is a fairly generic product that you could get from many other vendors and this person does not have these usual corporate information or business information pages, then you should move on and find another provider.
Tips for checking site credibility: Site user feedback
The second step in checking out the website is to quickly look for user reviews. Many responsible e-commerce sites already have user reviews on their site. These testimonials especially if there is some negative testimonial in the mix add credibility to the website. Be careful of websites that only list positive reviews. You are looking for candid reviews, not necessarily positive reviews. Websites that slant their reviews only a certain way could be a problematic provider. If it is a service provider or a specialized product provider, having only positive testimonials is okay and that is forgivable. If it is a shopping website, an e-commerce site with listing of many products and the site is really just in the business of being an online retailer, having only positive reviews should raise red flags. There is a big difference being a specialized service provider or specialty products merchant and being an online retailer. Take a look at the mix of positive and negative reviews. The key focus is you are looking for truthful reviews. It actually adds credibility to a retailer website if there are some negative reviews mixed in. This proves to most viewers and potential buyers that this service is for real. You cannot hit a home run all the time. You cannot score a goal all the time. There are bound to be issues. It is better to trust a retailer that is more transparent than one that keeps their skeletons hidden in the closet. The stakes are just too high. You might end up being one of those skeletons if you choose the wrong retailer.
Tips for checking site credibility: Comparison with ecommerce heavyweights
The third thing you should do in checking out a website is compare the site with more established e-commerce sites like Amazon, ebay and other large online retailers. Compare their product coverage. Compare the price. Compare the selection that they offer. If you are getting a substantially lower price from the non-established e-commerce site, then they are probably worth the risk. Similarly if they offer a product that the bigger competitions do not offer, then they are probably worth the risk. There are many specialty retailers out there that Amazon barely covers. Amazon has a relatively new program where it partners with online retailers to widen the products they sell in Amazon. In essence, Amazon is just leasing their online space to these specialized retailers. However, there are still quite a few retailers that do not participate in this program. Therefore, you might be in a situation where you have to buy a specialized product from these websites, which larger e-commerce sites like Amazon do not carry. In such a situation because of the scarcity of the product, it is probably worth to take a risk with such a smaller site. With that said, if the product price is not that much different or the product is readily available at Amazon.com and other established retailers, it is probably a better choice to go with the established online brand because their level of service has been proven, their level of integrity is less in doubt and you are bound to have lesser prices down the road. The bottom line with these larger sites is they just have too much credibility on the line to waste on your particular order. Put this dynamic to work for you. If the product is relatively abundant at Amazon.com, the amount of product coverage is the same, the selection is the same and the price difference is manageable, go with the proven provider and avoid headaches down the road.
2. Find a source that has a trust verification system
As we mentioned earlier, there are many sources for products and services online. Some are established specially designed e-commerce retailers. Others are more informal. There is a blog selling services and products, and one- to two-page online catalogue that lists services and products and has a Paypal link. Shopping online truly has a wide spectrum. There are very well-developed sites and there are very bare sites. Regardless, you might find yourself at these bare bones sites trying to buy a product because the larger competition do not have that product and that is just a fact of life. Regardless of the size, the organization and the structure of that particular site, you should still look for a trust verification system.
Be aware that trust verification implementations vary widely
A trust verification system is not some formal system that all websites have. Differing sites implement trust verification systems differently. They can take the form of a formal system where products are ranked by the website’s users. Other websites in addition to rankings also include the user’s reviews. Other websites use a voting system. Regardless of the system they use, always look for a way where the website recruits its visitors in vouching for their trust of the site. Surely many websites fake their trust verification system. They pad their sites with rake reviews and they run software that creates generally positive rankings. That is unavoidable. There are always a few rotten apples in the basket. However, you can protect yourself from these rotten apples by keeping your eyes peeled when looking at the trust verification system. Look at the rankings. Are they all positive rankings? That should raise a red flag. If the site is well established, a well known name in a particular niche or a general online retailer like Amazon, then that is more forgivable. However, if it is a smaller e-commerce website, a blog or a mini website, be very careful. The same analysis applies to reviews. If people post testimonials and they are all positive, be mindful of the size of the site. If the site is again custom or boutique website, it is fine if it has only positive testimonials. However, if the website is a retailer and has only positive reviews, it should raise a red flag. In terms of verifying reviews, especially for smaller boutique websites, we do not merely give them a pass because all the reviews are positive. We are already giving them the benefit of the doubt if they are specialty providers.
Take reviews with a grain of salt
Do not fully trust the reviews. You should still use common sense and read the reviews. Are they contradicting each other? Are they even relevant to the product that is being discussed? Can you detect a pattern? Can you detect evidence supporting a suspicion that these reviews were written by the same person? These and other types of questions should enter your mind. Just because we are acknowledging the fact that specialty or boutique websites, web pages and blogs are allowed to have all positive reviews, this does not excuse us from exercising common sense and verifying through simple reading if these reviews and testimonials are real.
Prioritize the list of websites you are considering buying from. Based on the analysis above, rank them and make the higher rank websites a priority. Only resort to the lower priority websites if the item you are interested in is out of stock, at the higher rank sites, or you are looking for a specialty product that restricts you to just a handful of providers.
3. Look for order page security
In the case of direct sales sites, study the order page carefully. Make sure that it is located on a secure server socket layer page. This is called the SSL page. The information that is put on this page is encrypted. It is a very important security feature to prevent hackers from intercepting your information. If you do not see an SSL page or https on your browser bar for the page, close the page and find another site. The page is just too risky to order from. This advice only applies for direct sales. Of course, there are many ways to get sales online. There are sales through e-mail and third party sales. For direct sales, it is SSL or secure page or nothing. The risks are just too high otherwise.
4. Be careful of third party sales
Online shopping sites can be broken down into three distinct sale types: direct sales, e-mail sales and third party sales. Third party sales, unlike the direct sales pages where your information is collected right on the site of the vendor, use third party payment providers like Paypal. They usually re-direct you to Paypal and you do the transaction there and then re-direct you back to the e-commerce site. There are many scam e-commerce pages out there that make fake payment links to Paypal. At the bare minimum, when you are redirected make sure you are on Paypal. Never ever enter your Paypal account and password information on a page without checking out if you are actually on Paypal. There are many fake Paypal capture pages out there. This advice applies to third party sales providers like Paypal, AlertPay and other payment processors.
Pay attention to where you are redirected to – don’t just rely on logos
Once again, make sure that you are on a secure page once you are “redirected” to the payment processor. Just because this page has the logo of the payment processor doesn’t necessarily mean it is the legitimate page of the processor. It can be a fake page. One key sign that you are dealing with a fake page is the actual third party sales page is not an SSL page. That is a huge red flag. Make sure that you are actually being redirected. In the event that you find you unwittingly left sensitive personal financial information on a fake third party sales processor page, contact your third party processor immediately and notify them of the situation. Make sure to give them the URL that you visited in order for them to take proper measures. In fact, big outfits like Paypal would more likely put their legal and administrative infrastructure to work for you by shutting down these fake pages because it is not in their interest for their brand to be harmed by scam pages described above.
5. Always ask for warranties
If you are buying products online, it helps tremendously if you ask for warranties. Contrary to conventional wisdom, warranties do not just apply to new items. Many online retailers can and do offer much limited warranties for used or refurbished items. Many warranties follow the product for a certain period of time – regardless of whether the product was resold or sold as used. It does not hurt to ask, so always ask. Even if it is a refurbished or used product that you are buying, ask for a warranty.
Warranties also apply to services
If you are buying services, ask for a warranty. Are you going to standby your work? Is this going to do what you claimed it would do? If people make guarantees or make certain claims online, hold them to those claims by asking for a warranty.
The bottomline is this: if people make claims especially when it comes to supplements or other products, push them to put their money where their mouth is. Asking for a warranty or a guarantee only protects you down the road because there are many things that could go wrong and having a warranty or guarantee behind your back truly helps and gives you peace of mind.
6. Always split your order
If you are dealing with a new untested retailer, service provider or online merchant, do not be afraid to split your order. In fact, we insist that you split your order. What does this mean? Let us say in reality you want to buy twenty units of a product. Buy one first and see how quickly the product was shipped. If there were issues encountered, pay attention to how your issue was resolved. Take a look at the product that you ordered. Was it in perfect shape? Was it described accurately at the website? Is it the right product? Once you have had your first small order, we suggest you order another small batch but order more items this time around. If things go off without a hitch, then order the full batch.
Spread out your risk by splitting your order
The reason you need to go through this system is because finding a retailer that you can trust, especially a specialized retailer, is very difficult. By splitting your order, you are facilitating the retailer to prove themselves to you–to prove their credibility, to prove their logistics and to prove that they can deliver. Use this tip religiously. If a provider is untested and unproven, always split your order. Sometimes splitting your order leads to financial disincentives. For example, bulk pricing is geared towards larger orders. Surely you would lose money ordering a smaller amount. However, this amount of money that you lost is nothing compared to the money that you will lose in the event you do a batch order with an untested merchant. Not only will you lose money, you will also lose time in trying to resolve the tissue and peace of mind. If in doubt, split your order.
The Bottom Line
E-commerce has come a long way in establishing trust and credibility. Every year, several billions’ worth of merchandise and services are bought and sold online and the pace is still going up and online commerce is here to stay. With that said, there are many scam sites, rip off businesses and unscrupulous people that are just out to take your money and not give anything of value in return. Use the tips above so the internet can deliver on its e-commerce promises instead of delivering the disappointment that its dark underbelly threatens.
