By Tony Bssat
Everyone loves a great bargain, but the hunt for a good deal is becoming risky business.
There are plenty of legitimate small businesses or resellers, but for every honest seller there’s often a fraudster selling low-quality imitations of trusted brand-name items.
The products often look like the real deal, but with a much lower price tag and at a much lower quality.
Known as the “grey market”, the products often aren’t counterfeits and may have been manufactured legitimately by a brand but are sold by an unauthorised retailer or channel.
Before handing over cash, make sure you know you’re buying from someone you can trust. There are several ways to verify a seller, and fraudsters will often give themselves away if you take the time to look into them. While a bargain price tag doesn’t necessarily mean a product is a counterfeit, if it seems too good to be true that’s often because it is.
A ludicrously low price should raise red flags and encourage you to do some digging before hitting “buy”. Some ways to outsmart counterfeiters and steer clear of grey market goods:
Take a closer look at those five-star reviews.
Check the seller’s reviews. Reviews shouldn’t be taken at face value.
Of course, scathing remarks from irate customers will tell you to steer clear, but even positive reviews should be taken with a pinch of salt.
Scammers will often post their own fake reviews, even on trusted sites.
If reviews are vague or generic, there are multiple comments saying the same thing with similar phrasing or reviewers seem to be using exaggerative or promotional language, these hint that either the reviews are fabricated or that the seller has incentivised buyers to leave positive feedback, such as by paying them for a good review. Pay attention to the details. Sometimes a seller’s online shop or page will tell you they’re untrustworthy thanks to a dubious graphic design style. But pro scammers can look professional.
Try reading their “about” or “contact us” section. If it’s full of grammatical errors and typos or lacks basic details such as a business address or phone number, that’s a good indication that something is wrong.
Check the website domain. You should be suspicious if the site ends in .org or .net – legitimate retailers typically don’t use those. But if you’re unsure, copying the web address into a free website reputation checker (such as DomainTools) can tell you everything you need to know about the site, including when it was created.
Be wary of sites that are written in your local language but have a domain that is hosted in another country or sites that are less than a year old. Check the packaging.
Once your product arrives, there are ways of checking if it’s genuine.
Most brands use high-quality, well-designed packaging for their products. Fraudsters will try to emulate the design but often the packaging will be flimsy and of poor quality or the product might not fit properly.
Check if the box includes contact addresses, email addresses or websites and customer service phone numbers.
Mandatory legal information is often also printed on packaging, such as information about product warranty or health and safety details.
Some companies will go the extra mile to ensure customers can verify that the product they’ve bought is genuine.
The Star