Black Friday and Cyber Monday translate to an average spending of 127 euro per consumer, according to Deloitte, and 23% of the Christmas budget of the Spanish families is spent. But what percentage of purchases is made online? GFK consultants reveal that 30% of sales in Spain are carried out online in a time when giants such as Amazon, El Corte Inglés or Booking multiply their sales by up to eight.
With a greater number of transactions, the possibility of a fraud in the sale exponentially increases. What do the experts recommend to avoid these frauds when paying with our cards online during the campaign? These are the five tips that they have given:
1. Check if the website you are using is secure
To find out if the website is a fraud, we need to check that it has the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) protocol. We can see this on the web site address when it has the expression https in front and a padlock icon on the left side of the address bar.
This tells us that the information is encrypted and that our information is protected. However, not all the online business web sites we use are encrypted. In this case, the recommendation is to check if the payment page has these elements (this is where the banking information is inserted to carry out the purchase).
2. Avoid offers that are too good
If the offer we are looking at is too good to be true, the chances of it being a fraud increase. For example, if we find a product that normally would cost 1,000 euro for only 500, we should not trust the authenticity of this offer.
We must not forget that we are in a sales period, and that we will find very attractive offers, so we should not distrust all the good offers either.
One recommendation, when faced with an irresistible offer that could have a catch, is to compare with other web sites. You should also make sure it is not a refurbished product or an imitation.
3. Seek opinions and references of the online business
We are looking for a very specific product, and suddenly, a great offer appears. The web site is unknown to us, but it looks safe. It has the encryption protocol, but the products seem too cheap compared to other portals or shops.
If it is a fraudulent web site, it is possible that several users have written reviews online. In fact, there are forums created for this purpose. Another reason to be cautious of a web site is when it has no reviews online, positive or negative.
4. Use a secondary payment card
In order to increase security when purchasing online, you can choose to use a prepaid card only for this purpose. This way, if the card information gets stolen, they would have access to all the funds. On the other hand, you can also use other alternatives such as PayPal.
5. Check the legal disclaimer and contract information
We should also check that the web site has a legal disclaimer and a section for terms and conditions. Furthermore, it is in our interest to know about the refund policy of the business and the delivery conditions, as they could launch exciting offers but with very high delivery cost that would eliminate the discount completely.
On the other hand, it is interesting to know how the customer care Works. If it is a foreign number or the email address is an illegible sequence of letters and numbers, or it is on a free domain such as gmail or hotmail, most likely we should not make purchases on this web site.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday translate to an average spending of 127 euro per consumer, according to Deloitte, and 23% of the Christmas budget of the Spanish families is spent. But what percentage of purchases is made online? GFK consultants reveal that 30% of sales in Spain are carried out online in a time when giants such as Amazon, El Corte Inglés or Booking multiply their sales by up to eight.
With a greater number of transactions, the possibility of a fraud in the sale exponentially increases. What do the experts recommend to avoid these frauds when paying with our cards online during the campaign? These are the five tips that they have given:
1. Check if the website you are using is secure
To find out if the website is a fraud, we need to check that it has the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) protocol. We can see this on the web site address when it has the expression https in front and a padlock icon on the left side of the address bar.
This tells us that the information is encrypted and that our information is protected. However, not all the online business web sites we use are encrypted. In this case, the recommendation is to check if the payment page has these elements (this is where the banking information is inserted to carry out the purchase).
2. Avoid offers that are too good
If the offer we are looking at is too good to be true, the chances of it being a fraud increase. For example, if we find a product that normally would cost 1,000 euro for only 500, we should not trust the authenticity of this offer.
We must not forget that we are in a sales period, and that we will find very attractive offers, so we should not distrust all the good offers either.
One recommendation, when faced with an irresistible offer that could have a catch, is to compare with other web sites. You should also make sure it is not a refurbished product or an imitation.
3. Seek opinions and references of the online business
We are looking for a very specific product, and suddenly, a great offer appears. The web site is unknown to us, but it looks safe. It has the encryption protocol, but the products seem too cheap compared to other portals or shops.
If it is a fraudulent web site, it is possible that several users have written reviews online. In fact, there are forums created for this purpose. Another reason to be cautious of a web site is when it has no reviews online, positive or negative.
4. Use a secondary payment card
In order to increase security when purchasing online, you can choose to use a prepaid card only for this purpose. This way, if the card information gets stolen, they would have access to all the funds. On the other hand, you can also use other alternatives such as PayPal.
5. Check the legal disclaimer and contract information
We should also check that the web site has a legal disclaimer and a section for terms and conditions. Furthermore, it is in our interest to know about the refund policy of the business and the delivery conditions, as they could launch exciting offers but with very high delivery cost that would eliminate the discount completely.
On the other hand, it is interesting to know how the customer care Works. If it is a foreign number or the email address is an illegible sequence of letters and numbers, or it is on a free domain such as gmail or hotmail, most likely we should not make purchases on this web site.
