ScamWatch By Bill Cunningham
Online Shopping
Who do we think they are?
We have to trust our own judgement when paying online, for maybe a Black Friday deal. Buying for the first time from an unknown seller has dangers at-tached. Buying via a social media prompt even more so. Scam websites promote very low prices to attract us and then sell us fakes or goods that do not exist. They will also exert pressure to buy; and we know, don’t we, that getting poorer quick is easier than getting rich quick. Paying by credit or debit card offers us some rights to get the money back, but if we pay by bank transfer then it could well be a goner. Clicking on a link in an email is NOT how to reach a well-known retail name. It is of course time consuming to carefully check what is being offered and by whom, but very worthwhile. Buying slow is far far safer that buying quick. If the website has no ‘contact us’ section, lacks clarity about our contractual rights, shows no real business address nor land-line phone number, then we beware.
According to Action Fraud there were 3.5 million fraud offences in the year ending March 2023 and 46% of internet users have engaged with fraudsters with 25% then losing money. So, let’s be careful. We were due in April 2024 some belated good fraud news. Then banks would have to refund us blameless victims, our losses from Authorised Push Payment fraud. In 2019 most banks signed up to a voluntary code of practice to refund us. APP is where we have sent a manual bank trans-fer to the account of a fraudster who has convinced us that they are the genuine article. Even April next year was a long time coming, for some banks have been dragging their feet on the issue for years. In the last year, this resulted in the banks considering about a third of our losses (£200m) to be our fault, rather than us being seen as the innocent party. Now they have been allowed to drag it out a bit further – to October 2024.