Shopping: Paying Safely

We’ve all heard of credit card fraud, security issues and identity fraud. These are some of the issues that start alarm bells ringing and stops people from clicking the ‘buy’ or ‘purchase’ button.

Being a customer, you’ve found the perfect item and have decided to buy. Before you fill out the order form and provide your personal details to the seller make sure that they are a reputable and trustworthy seller. Do a background check by typing the company or website name into a search engine such as Google.com. Typing in the company name will bring up other consumer opinions. They may have complaints such as never receiving the item or slow delivery or bad customer service. There may be praises such as quick delivery, low prices, trustworthy.

For background checks I recommend using Yahoo rather than Google. Yahoo have recently introduced a new toolbar which gives you quick and easy access when you are in a hurry. You can download the toolbar by clicking here.

After doing the background check, see if the order form is processed in a secure site. Usually there is a little button on the form telling you the security level of the website. If you can’t find one look it up in FAQ section or contact customer support.

Almost all vendors in the online market accept Credit Card, Paypal, money orders and bank transfers. The safest way to pay is to use paypal as the vendor never gets access to your personal details. If you are a vendor I recommend you sign up for a merchant account by clicking here.

Cheers and have a good online shopping experience

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