These days, the sense of anxiety that begins the holiday shopping season appears diminished, not so much that people don’t plan to shop this year, but because there are more options for people to choose from. While stores are open 24 hours a day, most shoppers discover that getting the right information for their money back is often difficult. They wind up locked in to their computers, with the not so friendly (or trustworthy) people standing guard over their transactions.
By now we all know that when something goes wrong with a purchase, either your money back or your experience, you can trust the people that you transaction with. That assurance is what many people look for in a transaction. And why not-after all, this is all about keeping your money safe.
But there is good news. While many people still look for bargain basement prices, there are more online retailers to choose from. You can now find clearance deals, large and small online. Remember before you had to spend hours online looking for the right store? Now, not only can you look for deals, you can test them out for yourself.
Stores are now logging online transactions as late as Wednesday afternoon. If you are making a purchase online on a Wednesday, you can be assured that your transaction will be handled properly. If you are making a purchase right now, and I am not suggesting that you do so, make sure that your transaction is processed permanently or you may experience shipping problems.
How does one determine if the online retailer or affiliate you are dealing with waits until Wednesday to process a transaction? Here is a sample of a Wednesday afternoon transaction:
Http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Myeavour=2&spindx=true
As you can see there it is no big deal about the date, it is the large field that matters. If this field is left as true it will give you a refund as well as a chargeback to your credit card issuer.
This type of scam is popular with auction and free ads sites these days. If you think that something is too good to be true, walk away. Before you go after another company, though, make sure that you have checked out this company before you come to their website. Make sure that you read their about us page and look for reviews. If you don’t find anything, or need to ask someone who knows more about this company, than you might get an answer. If the seller directs you to another site, be sure that you check that out as well.
(2) Email OnlyNot true in a small amount of cases, but true is most of the time, because of the way that online works, a scammer leaves you an email address. They don’t need a phone number or a physical address. With an email, you can go to a suspicious website and never set your mouse over to click a link.
(3) If It Sounds Too Good To Be True, It Probably IsBe very wary of an offer that comes from someone that you do not know. Yes, there are people that will offer you thousands of dollars right now, but if they came to you, would you spend that money? Perhaps it was a phone call? You just cannot know.
(4) They Are Too Old to Be Thefting Anyone’s MoneyThis was actually happening to a friend of mine a while ago. She received an email that claimed to be coming from Microsoft. It was promoting a free tool that could be downloaded to increase the speed of one’s computer. It was also an offer that could reduce the risk of a virus infection. It was supposedly sent by Microsoft and asked the recipient to download it in order to activate it.
Wait, what? You say you’ve been receiving these emails for years. Why would Microsoft call you and ask you to download a free tool just so they can give away free software?
Truth is, they probably just wanted to know if you would download it. You know you will if you want it bad enough. But once you say yes, you may be getting more than you bargained for.
My friend was also promised a certain software product that would change the way she viewed her business. Every time she would show up at a meeting or event she was always flooded with offers to make her more money, more quickly, and more effectively than ever before. She couldn’t understand it because she kept receiving the same ideas over and over again.
Finally, she found a program on the Internet that helped her contacts Sync their databases together. They called it Friendster and frankly, it was a revelation. She could now access information about her clients as if they were in real time. She could communicate real time and be directed to specific people, products and services that she wanted to talk to and would purchase.
