Things to consider when shopping online

The fact that online shopping has the largest market share also whets the appetite of malicious fraudsters, and they defraud people intensively both on social media channels and second-hand sites. Of course, being a little careful while shopping can make us stay away from these people. We may use the following information to identify these individuals and protect ourselves.

Marketplace channels: It is the safest option to prefer marketplace channels primarily for shopping. Many marketplaces like Cosmedrome scrutinize when approving vendors selling on their platforms. The fact that the people who will make sales are legally selling (having a tax plate) and their information is registered in the marketplace systems ensures that the negative situations that may occur are minimized.

The most important advantage of marketplaces is that the product reviews of customers who have shopped from that company before are more reliable. Sellers' inability to manipulate comments, as we will describe in the next "Shopping Sites" step, makes this data more reliable. These reviews also give an average rating for each seller, making it a lot easier for you to decide how good the store is for shopping.

To give an example, the picture above shows how popular a Cosmedrome vendor is. The store rating is an average compiled from reviews of the seller's products by customers who purchased out of 5 stars. Response Rate, on the other hand, shows what percentage of the seller's customers' messages are returned. This information provides you with detailed information about the reliability of the seller before ordering.

Shopping websites: It would be healthy to pay attention to whether the seller/company to be shopping has a website and whether it is possible to shop with a credit card on the website. For shopping with credit cards, companies must cooperate directly with banks or companies licensed by the BRSA. Since companies must meet certain criteria in order to receive virtual pos, sites that can be shopped online provide you with a security standard.

Of course, the point we need to pay attention to here is to research the reliability of the shopping site well. The number of fraudsters trying to steal credit card information with fake online payment forms has been increasing in recent days. For this reason, it would be healthier to research the company through search engines before shopping.

Although product reviews and store comments added to the website for shopping on shopping sites are taken as a criterion for decision-making, they should not be considered as the only factor. Since websites belong to companies, they are open to deceptions such as adding spam comments with codes and changing data by companies.

Social media accounts: Although there are many social media pages that sell well, you are much more likely to come across a scammer on social media channels due to the advantage of easy account creation and sales. While shopping on these pages, you should review the things we mentioned in the previous "Shopping Sites" heading. You can choose the pages that can issue invoices and provide shopping with credit cards by doing a preliminary research.

The most common mistake people make when shopping from these accounts is the purchases made by looking at the number of followers of the comments and pages. Since these data can be bought for money, they should not be seen as an element of reliability. Especially criteria such as followers and likes can be easily manipulated by page owners.

You can reach more reliable vendors by checking a few important steps mentioned above before ordering and you can complete your purchases without any problems.