Website Scams - security shopping on-line Saturday 1st August 2009

When you are considering buying on-line you may want to consider taking some extra precautions before parting with your money. Website Scams - security shopping on-line - know who you're buying from when you buy from a .co.uk website Could you be buying from a "Dodgy" UK Website? This morning, the BBC and all other major UK news channels have been giving significant coverage to the problem of buying goods on line from what purports to be a UK based company with a ".co.uk" web address, only to find that the company is not British and the goods could be counterfeit. The case used to illustrate the problem for the morning newsround, featured a victim who purchased a pair of Nike trainers on line from a plausible .co.uk website, only to find that the website belonged to a company in China, and that the trainers were in fact fakes! So how can you protect yourself? When you are considering buying on-line you may want to consider taking some extra precautions before parting with your money. A couple of simple things you can do are; - use the "WHOIS" internet checking facility to see who owns the website - make sure the website clearly shows a UK trading address and telephone number - if you're worried about the supplier, you can always phone to check that it's a valid telephone number - you can check the validity of the post code using one of the various free on-line postcode checking facilities or you can use "google maps" to see that the property actually exists and is what it claims (a recent check I made on a business trading address using "google maps", clearly showed the location to be a flat in a residential block, ...may be not a problem for some types of business, but certainly in this instance the property was not a large warehouse as indicated by the website!) To keep things in perspective, the old adage "if it looks to good to be true..." is worth remembering. And whilst for some types of product, a cheap copy may be perfectly adequate (or even desirable), when it comes to something that must be as described and the genuine article you need to be more rigorous with your checking! A good example of an area where buying the genuine article is critical is security products. A metal detector that detects "sometimes" it more dangerous than one that doesn't work at all and the same principle applies to most other security products whether it be a personal alarm, padlock or whatever. Good websites will show: Check out the Insight Security website to see how a good company website will provide you with full company address and contact details including; company name and trading address, phone & fax numbers, company registration number, etc (not just an e-mail address or mobile phone number!) ...and the Insight-Direct On-Line security shop also shows full contact details on the "CONTACT US" page ...while you're there, don't forget to check out the current security product bargains! It's not exactly rocket science, but making a few simple, practical checks like those mentioned above, before you buy, makes very good sense and could save you a costly mistake ...happy & safe shopping. This message was added on Saturday 1st August 2009

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