Traits of a Fake E-Commerce Website

Ever saw an advert on Facebook for some lucrative item and clicked to buy an item from an unknown website. In today’s era of eCommerce we frequently do this.

Have you ever conned by the website by purchasing the item. Yes, I am. My wife clicks on a random website that was selling gown at dirt cheap prices. The website’s name was ethanicguru.com (It no longer exist now). The contact details of the website just contains a WhatsApp number and an E-Mail ID.

So, the story is that, wifey saw the site through facebook, urges me to purchase an item she liked so much on website. The website offered COD (Cash on Delivery: a preferred method for Indian eCommerce websites), so wife said there would be no harm in ordering. The order came, we found that it was plain cloth in place of the gown. The courier guys goes after taking payment and before we opened our packet. We tried to contact the seller on call and WhatsApp and nobody took our calls. Despite our best effort, we were not able to return that item.

Moral of the story, never trust an unknown website.

But the question is how to avoid them. Do we only depend on marketplaces like Amazon and Flipkart?

But some websites used to sell unique items and at very low prices. Probably establishing their business. Sometimes deals are so good that we cannot avoid them.

How to differentiate between these scammers and genuine websites who are selling genuine stuff. Here are some key points which you should keep in mind while identifying reliable websites to buy your stuff.

1. Check the contact details of a website.

Check the contact details of the website. If the website has only a phone number and an E-Mail address, don’t trust it. Why in this world a business should hide it’s physical address? There must be something to hide if the business does not shows his physical address.

For example this website https://fitooz.net/ , I cannot trust this website because on its contact details page he only gave his phone number. Even this website does not offer an email address where we would be able to mail them. (I am not linking to this website as I don’t want to take them any advantage)

Another example see https://boip.in/ . They gave their physical address on their home page. You may buy them with confidence. At least you have a physical address which you would be able to report to police if things goes nasty.

2. Try to contact for a pre-sales enquiry

If you find a physical address on the website, just try to connect with them with a pre-sales inquiry. If they promptly answer, and satisfy you, they may be genuine. I don’t believe in the persons who were not promptly reply to my pre-sales queries. (Make sure you are contacting them during working hours. Most the websites are managed by 2-3 people and they don’t have resources to answer your queries in late night.)

3. Avoid Cash on Delivery (CoD) from new websites altogether.

As I told you in starting, my wife ordered from an unknown website that offered COD facility. When the order came, the courier guy collect money from us and after his departure, we opened the packet. We helplessly tried to connect to someone who would be able to help us.

You may wonder if this is true. COD is the safest method available to shop online. This perception is entirely wrong in the mind of Indian customers. Let me explain the whole thing.

I want to take a payment gateway for my website, there are two possible ways.

First I take a payment gateway directly from bank, which is a very cumbersome process. Also bank does not setup a payment gateway for everyone without completing KYC (Know Your Customer). There is a hell lot of documentation before they approve payment gateway for a website. They check their policies, their policies in case of a dispute between the website and a customer. The bank is liable for any frauds done on its payment gateway.

Another option is to install a gateway from third party providers like payumoney, razorpay, paytm etc. These third party companies are also bound by the rules of RBI. They also thoroughly check the website, its policies and proper documentation from the website.

Since a scammer has only intent to scam, he would not complete the hassles of the proper documentation from these payment gateways.

Also, there is a catch most Indians are not aware of. There is a concept in credit cards known as chargeback. You can read more about it in this very nice article here ( https://www.instamojo.com/blog/chargeback-meaning-merchants-bank-instamojo/ ). This is a mechanism to prevent you from credit card frauds. If you did not get your product or service after paying through credit card, you always ask from your card issuer back for a chargeback.

So, to summarize this there are main points to avoid eCommerce frauds.

1. Check the physical address of the website
2. Try to make a pre-sales query from the website
3. Avoid COD altogether.

If I found something more useful, I will update the article accordingly.

Thanks for reading.