As a computer geek, people often ask me about buying online. Personally, I buy A LOT of stuff online. I’m less worried about credit card theft online, than I am about the companies who "sell" their wares. I have had many bad experiences with companies because I didn’t check them out first.
My examples have gone like this: There’s this thing that want, so I search on Google, Froogle, or some other website that lists items for sale from various vendors. I find the item I want and check a couple of places listed that have that item. I finally select one that has a good price and good shipping fees. I order from them. Then weeks go by and I still don’t have my item, but they have my money. Or… I get the item, and it’s refurbished (but it didn’t say that it was on the website), or worse yet, they send me a similar item that costs much less than the name brand of what I wanted, but I still paid name brand prices.
What to do? Well… if you are going to buy online, if you have heard good experiences from a friend about that company, you’re probably OK. Or, if they have a physical store that you can go to, you’re OK. If they are purely an internet-based company, check them out before you buy! And how do you do that? Here’s the best way I’ve found!
www.RipOffReport.com
Go to their site, so a search for the name of the business / website that you want to order from. Then (most important step) READ what others have said. If there’s more than one or two comments, I wouldn’t even THINK of using that company. Why? Because if there’s more than one or two comments, there’s probably really 50 or 100 comments that people never posted on this site.
So, happy online-shopping, good hunting, and be sure to either forward this message on to friends and family, or just tell them to use this site!