Thomas Hawk tried to buy a camera. And what a mess it became. Follow his story at Flickr or at his site.
So even very experienced people like Thomas can be fooled by low prices and great reviews. The company Thomas bought from, had a four star rating at Yahoo Shopping, with almost 900 reviews. How could they get that score if they are just bad?
Here are a few tips of mine when shopping online:
- When shopping online, always Google the name of the site and the words “scam”, “bad customer service” or similar words. Try this with the company Thomas dealt with, PriceRitePhoto…
- When shopping products at Amazon, check the lower ratings first. Sometimes you get interesting information others haven’t told about.
- Advice from people you know is always good, not just a web page somewhere.
There will of course be people who complain and cry wolf with even the best shops. And if you google “scam” and some of the bigger ones like Amazon and eBay, you will get thousands of links about scams related to the companies, like phishing.
My friend Eirik says (freely translated from Norwegian): “The joy of the low price is always shorter than the anger about the low quality.”