Timbals

Monday, June 29th, 2009

How to Avoid Internet Scams

Shopping on the internet has become ever-popular, and has been marvelous for the consumer - it’s made it very straight-forward to shop. Also, the increase in competition coupled with the cost-effectiveness with selling online has low selling prices for goods.

All The Same, as the online market has broadened, so too has the necessity to be cognizant of your consumer rights, and what you should do if you are in receipt of faulty items or goods that you paid for but didn’t actually get. Data is made public on the web, such as the consumer protection act 1987.

You also need to be aware of what payment provider to use to buy something, as each payment gateway has its own terms. For example, Paypal are an independent arbitrator only for physical goods, not digital downloads. Knowing this kind of information is the difference between getting your money back or being ripped of by an 419 fraud.

Our word to the wise is to do your research about the vendor : do they display their phone number and postal address? What is the seller’s privacy policy? Their returns policy? Their terms and conditions? All these questions need to be addressed prior to considering making a purchase from the seller.

Another very issue to consider: what are the methods of purchase? Nowadays, it’s inadequate to simply look for a Secure Socket Layer Certificate - this won’t tell you how they keep your data, only how it’s transmitted when you make your purchase. If you have doubts, only buy from sellers who use 3rd party payment gateways such as PayPal, Google Checkout, WorldPay, SagePay and NoChex.You can also verify the reputation the vendor has with his payment gateway, e.g. check his PayPal account and how many transactions have happened on this individual account.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 9:29 am and is filed under Commerce Marketing, Consumer Planet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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