These days virtually all of us are buying more and more products online. The pandemic only accelerated what was already a growing trend and now even people who may have been late to the party in buying a lot of products online have gotten into the habit. But, as we buy products more regularly, it’s not surprising that people are also running into occasional issues with those orders. Whether it ends up being customer service issues or more serious things like fraud, the problems are only going to become more prevalent in the years ahead. Fortunately, there are some steps you can take to minimize the likelihood of running into certain issues.
So, here are a few tips to help make your online shopping more successful, safe, and hassle-free.
Know the Sites you Buy From
If you’re like me, you see ads for all kinds of products not only online, but on social media. Personally, I’m a sucker for a cool t-shirt and Facebook has certainly figured this out about me. I see ads for interesting t-shirts on a regular basis. Since I like t-shirts, I don’t mind this at all. I have also been introduced to some pretty awesome t-shirt companies over the past few years. My t-shirt drawer certainly suggests this is the case. But, I have also seen ads for shirts or other products that look cool, but that I have to wonder about just a bit.
When we buy from a store that we know really well (pick your favorite brick-and-mortar store) you have a pretty good idea of the product quality and the service you can expect. You probably picked up the product with your hands as well, so you get to gauge certain aspects of the quality in person. Online, you may see a picture or even a video of the product, but you aren’t picking it up and manipulating it yourself. But, if you are buying from the website of a favorite store, you probably still feel OK about making the purchase. You know the brand and you have a level of trust that what you buy will be what you expect.
Now extend that to a brand you have never engaged with before and maybe one that doesn’t have a real-world presence. At this point, you’re trusting your money, possibly a credit card number, and various other personal info with an unknown entity. That starts to feel a little sketchy, right? Chances are the website you’re buying from is fine and your product will show up and you will or won’t like it quite as much as when it was online, but it’s OK.
But, you can avoid some of the riskiness here by doing a little research before buying. Check reviews of the company and product you are buying. If they have been around a while and seem to have a good track record of giving customers their money’s worth, then you can feel a bit more comfortable about buying from a new company.
Even on Amazon - Check the Seller
So, to build on the first tip, a lot of people assume that if they are buying something on Amazon, that they should generally feel good about it, even if the product is coming from a different seller on the Amazon Marketplace. As you probably know, Amazon doesn’t make or sell many of the products available on the site. They are instead coming from third parties who have registered with Amazon to sell products on the site.
Nothing wrong with this at all, as Amazon gives these merchants a great way to get their products in front of a huge audience. Sometimes Amazon handles the fulfillment (when the products are actually stored in an Amazon warehouse), but in others, Amazon is just the conduit and you are buying from an entirely different seller who will also be handling the shipping of the item.
Now there is some reason to believe that a retailer on Amazon is more likely to be vetted and trustworthy than just some random website. Amazon does monitor its sellers and will remove them from the platform for violating their rules. However, there is still a buyer beware element to any transaction with a seller on Amazon.
Here’s just one example of what can go a bit sideways. My wife and I remodeled our kitchen this summer and we bought a new faucet on Amazon. We did a fair amount of research and found it was a highly reviewed option. When we bought it, we found the best price on Amazon, rather than going with a big-box retailer. We ordered it and it showed up on time. Great! And it was great until about 3 months later when we noticed a crack developing in part of the handle. I reached out to the manufacturer to file a warranty claim. Small problem. This manufacturer does not honor warranties if a product was bought from an official, approved retailer. Turns out the seller on Amazon was not an official retailer for the company. They also let me know that the product was now discontinued and was no longer available for sale. They also didn’t have any replacement parts for it. I am guessing the Amazon retailer bought a few of the remnants from the manufacturer and sold them on Amazon. The big-box stores had also stopped selling it.
So, in the end, we had to buy a different brand new faucet. The lesson on this one might be that there are advantages to buying from an official reseller, even on Amazon.
Use a Password Manager
One last one. As you start buying from new websites or apps that you haven’t used before, you may be required to create user accounts and logins. This is a pain, but often they provide you some additional benefits in order tracking and possibly access to customer support. So, they are worth considering. But, when you do decide to create a new user account, you definitely want to use a unique password. Do not fall back on using some generic username and password combination that is easy to remember and you use it across tons of sites. That is just asking for trouble. But, I understand the challenges of creating a new password for every website. You can’t possibly remember them all. And if you are following password best practices, they are just a bunch of random keyboard characters anyway, so you won’t memorize any of them.
The way to overcome the challenge is to use a password manager (check out our article on some of the best password managers). These tools will typically integrate with your web browser, suggest a new random password when you sign up for a new site and then save it in your password vault. Then, your password manager will remember it the next time you visit that site and make it easy to log in. This is bar far the most secure and user friendly way of adopting good password practices while also keeping your sanity.
