{"id":1147,"date":"2020-10-23T18:16:44","date_gmt":"2020-10-23T18:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fraud.flywheelsites.com\/?p=1147"},"modified":"2020-11-09T07:30:41","modified_gmt":"2020-11-09T07:30:41","slug":"fake-merchandise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fraud.org\/fake-merchandise\/","title":{"rendered":"Fake merchandise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Online shopping is becoming a convenient alternative for those to like to shop in the comfort of their own home, any time of the day or night. But while there are many legitimate companies online, there are also fraudulent sellers out to cheat consumers.<\/p>\n<h4>Stay safe. Be Informed.<\/h4>\n<p>The fake merchandise scam category covers a wide variety of fraud. Most of them include a seller posting an item online (typically high-dollar clothing, shoes, or electronics) at Craigslist or an auction site such as eBay. These regularly pricey items are being listed for a fraction of the typical price and seem like an attractive deal, but actually turn out to be scams. The unscrupulous seller takes your money but never sends you the item you paid for, because they never had it to begin with! Or worse, the classifieds website\u00a0only exists to harvest consumers\u2019 payment card or personal information to be used by scammers to purchase merchandise elsewhere or commit identity theft.<\/p>\n<p>Other examples of fake merchandise scams are magazine sales\u2014where someone offers you\u00a0a great deal on new subscriptions or to renew your current ones. But it could be a con artist trying to trick you into spending more than you realize or paying for magazines that you&#8217;ll never receive. Or maybe you find an unbelievable deals on computer hardware and software on the Internet But most likely the offer will turn out to be too good to be true. Since these items are expensive, it pays to play it safe when you buy online.<\/p>\n<p>Follow these tips below to practice safe online buying habits.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Do a price-check for similar merchandise<\/strong>\u00a0before trusting an unknown online retailer, especially one advertising on Craigslist. If the price listed is far below traditional online retailers (think Amazon, Best Buy, Zappos) for a piece of popular merchandise (such as wireless phones, game consoles, sneakers, or designer clothing), the \u201cdeal\u201d could easily be a scam.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Know who you\u2019re dealing with.<\/strong>\u00a0If the seller is unfamiliar, check with your state or local consumer protection agency and the Better Business Bureau. Some Web sites have feedback forums, which can provide useful information about other people\u2019s experiences with particular sellers. Get the physical address and phone number in case there is a problem later.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Look for information about how complaints are handled.<\/strong>\u00a0It can be difficult to resolve complaints, especially if the seller is located in another country. Look on the Web site for information about programs the company participates in that require it to meet standards for reliability and help to handle disputes.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Be aware that no complaints is no guarantee.<\/strong>\u00a0Fraudulent operators open and close quickly, so the fact that no one has made a complaint yet doesn\u2019t meant that the seller is legitimate. You still need to look for other danger signs of fraud.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Be skeptical about incredibly low prices or rebates that promise to cover the entire cost of the product.<\/strong>\u00a0The goods may not exist at all, or the seller may be on the verge of going out of business and never deliver the promised merchandise or rebate.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Understand the offer.<\/strong>\u00a0A legitimate seller will give you all the details about the products, the total price, the delivery time, the refund and cancellation policies, and the terms of any warranty.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Resist pressure.<\/strong>\u00a0Legitimate companies will be happy to give you time to make a decision. It\u2019s probably a scam if they demand that you act immediately or won\u2019t take \u201cNo\u201d for an answer.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Be cautious about unsolicited emails.<\/strong>\u00a0They are often fraudulent. If you are familiar with the company that sent you the email and you don\u2019t want to receive further messages, send a reply asking to be removed from the email list. However, responding to unknown senders may simply verify that yours is a working email address and result in even more unwanted messages from strangers. The best approach may simply be to delete the email.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Beware of imposters.<\/strong>\u00a0Someone might send you an email pretending to be connected with a business or create a Web site that looks just like that of a well-known company. If you\u2019re not sure that you\u2019re dealing with the real thing, find another way to contact the legitimate business and ask.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Guard your personal information.<\/strong>\u00a0Don\u2019t provide your credit card or bank account number unless you are actually paying for something. Your social security number should not be necessary unless you are applying for credit. Be especially suspicious if someone claiming to be from a company with whom you have an account asks for information that the business already has.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Pay the safest way.<\/strong>\u00a0Credit cards are the safest way to pay for online purchases because you can dispute the charges if you never get the goods or if the offer was misrepresented. Federal law limits your liability to $50 if someone makes unauthorized charges to your account, and most credit card issuers will remove them completely if you report the problem promptly. There are new technologies, such as \u201csubstitute\u201d credit card numbers and password programs, that can offer extra measures of protection from someone else using your credit card.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Check out who\u2019s behind the website you\u2019re shopping at.<\/strong>\u00a0Take a look at the \u201ccontact us\u201d page. If there\u2019s no telephone number to call, or if the number doesn\u2019t work when you call, it could be a scam. Check out the registration details of the web domain at WHOIS.net. Is the website registered in the U.S.? Try calling the phone numbers for the domain\u2019s administrative and technical contacts. If they don\u2019t work, or you are routed to a domain registration company\u2019s support line, it could be a scam.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Don\u2019t shop at a website that lacks the SSL padlock.<\/strong>\u00a0Legitimate online retailers should protect the information you share on the site with Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption. You can tell if a site uses SSL by the padlock that shows up to the left of the website\u2019s URL in your browser\u2019s address bar. If you don\u2019t see the padlock, shop somewhere else.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you\u2019ve been scammed, or suspect the person you\u2019re dealing with online is a scammer, file a complaint. Fraudsters can only be stopped if we all work together to share our experiences and raise the alarm. Filing a complaint at Fraud.org only takes a few minutes, but helps arm our network of more than 90 law enforcement and consumer protection agency partners with the information they need to shut down scam artists.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fraud.org\/fraud-alerts\/\"><strong><u>Find Fraud Alerts related to this scam here.<\/u><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Online shopping is becoming a convenient alternative for those to like to shop in the comfort of their own home, any time of the day or night. But while there are many legitimate companies online, there are also fraudulent sellers out to cheat consumers. Stay safe. Be Informed. The fake merchandise scam category covers a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":900,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[130],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fraud.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fraud.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fraud.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fraud.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fraud.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1147"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fraud.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2200,"href":"https:\/\/fraud.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147\/revisions\/2200"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fraud.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fraud.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fraud.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fraud.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}