Top tips for shopping safely online this sale season
Sales happen all year round, but some periods draw bigger crowds than others, think Black Friday, the Christmas rush, New Year, the January sales, or end of financial year. Whenever more people are shopping online, there are more scammers looking to take advantage of it.
One of the scammer’s favourite tricks is to fool you into thinking you must act urgently. But during sale season, urgency is real! This makes it more important than ever to check your own online shopping habits and remain aware of when a deal is actually a scam.
Shopping online is convenient, and can be done safely if you’re careful and follow a few simple rules.
A genuine seller or shopping website will never insist that you can only pay using a bank transfer, a gift card from an unrelated business, a pre-paid card, or cryptocurrency. If a shopping site demands these kinds of payments, this is a strong warning sign of a scam.
How to spot a scam shopping site
When a scammer’s goal is simply to take your money without delivering anything, they often build a very convincing-looking shopping site to do it. Here are some classic warning signs that a shopping site is fake or part of a scam:
- Expensive items are shown off at an unrealistically low price, even for sale season. A $2000 computer for $1000 is realistic for a sale. The same computer discounted to $200 is a scam.
- Lots of short reviews that are positive but don’t have much detail. Such as “Great site!! Will shop again!”
- No visible returns information, no terms and conditions, no privacy policy, and no listing of an ABN.
- You can’t find any contact details or a listed physical address anywhere on the site.
- Complicated or odd-seeming payment options. No PayPal or regular credit cards accepted, instead the site only wants cryptocurrency, payment made by gift card or direct transfer.
What’s the safest way to pay online?
Overall, it is safe to pay for things online, but the method you use to pay may affect how easily you can recover your funds if something goes wrong.
Before entering any payment details, check the website address in the top of your browser. Make sure you can see the padlock icon to the left of the address, and that the address starts with https://
This ensures nobody else can easily capture your payment details as they are sent securely over the internet. It doesn’t prove the shopping site itself is legitimate, though.
The safer methods to pay are those that let you recover funds more easily:
- Credit cards from major banks have good protection and dedicated fraud departments.
- PayPal is an extra layer between a shopping site and your credit card.
Payment methods you should never use include those where there’s no way to recover funds:
- Direct bank deposits, even to legitimate banks, are usually very hard or impossible to recover.
- A money transfer or money order is essentially like paying in cash.
- Cryptocurrency is also like paying cash and is usually only an option on dodgy sites.
- Gift cards from an unrelated site, such as iTunes, Google Play or Amazon gift cards, are often requested by scam sites, and the card value is impossible to recover once the code is handed over. Gift cards are safe when used on the site that issued them, for example a Bunnings card to buy from Bunnings.
How to check a shopping site before you buy
During sale season, scammers set up fake sites and ads to catch you while you’re in a hurry to grab a bargain. A few quick checks before you buy can tell you whether a site is legitimate or not.
If it’s a site you’ve used before:
- Type the shopping website address into your browser yourself. Clicking sponsored ads or search results for a familiar online store might direct you to a fake site.
- Don’t click through from social media ads. A scam ad can take you to a fake website designed to look like your favourite shopping site. You may end up losing your money, or receiving items you didn’t want to purchase.
If it’s a shopping website that’s new to you:
- Look for the shopping site’s ABN, often at the very top or bottom of the front page. Look it up on business.gov.au to check it is a legitimate business.
- Look for a physical address for the company that runs the shopping site and see if they have a phone number.
- Try calling the number to make sure there’s someone real behind the shopping site.
- Do a web search for independent reviews of the shopping site, never rely on the reviews on the site itself, which can be easily faked.
- Check that the web address is free of extra dashes or odd spellings of familiar brand names. Scammers might be trying to pretend they have a relationship with a top brand you want, but will instead send a poor-quality fake.
- Look for any terms and conditions published on the shopping site, especially about returns, refunds, and warranty.
Also check for any rules about who must pay for return postage, and if refunds are offered as a simple cashback or only as store credit.
Other types of shopping scams
The missed delivery scam
You’ll receive a text, email, or call claiming to be Australia Post, saying a delivery couldn’t get to you, and you need to act quickly by paying a fee or updating your details.
If you aren’t expecting a parcel, this is almost definitely a scam. Australia Post and other couriers never ask for extra fees or your personal details via text.
What you should do: You can safely ignore the message.
The fake invoice scam
You will receive a bill via email, or even in the post. It will be either:
- A fake legal threat to pay a full amount immediately.
- A fake request that you pay a small processing fee to receive the item.
What you should do: You should delete this bill or throw it away. If you received it via email or message, be careful not to click on any links or visit any websites shown on the bill.
The fake prize scam
You will receive a text, email or call saying you’ve won a prize or even a whole holiday. These scams increase during the sale season because people often get signed up to legitimate competitions by shopping sites. However, you can easily spot a prize or holiday scam because it will ask you to pay a fee to claim your prize. A legitimate competition never asks winners to pay.
What you should do: You can just ignore this.
Where to go for help
When things don’t go as planned, there are steps you can take to try to fix a problem:
- Contact the seller. Always try to resolve the problem with the seller first. Explain the problem and the outcome you want. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has a complaint letter tool you can use to help you write an email or letter to the business you bought the product from. Or if you prefer to call the business but not quite sure what to say, CHOICE has phone scripts you can follow.
- Contact your bank or credit card provider. Check whether you can reverse the charges while the matter is being investigated. If you paid with PayPal, you may also be able to lodge a dispute.
- Make a consumer complaint. If you haven’t been able to solve your problem with the seller, contact the ACCC for advice or your local consumer protection agency.
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