Take Extra Measures:
Do you know the individuals or the seller, what's their reputation?
This can be very important when dealing with online auction sites. It is possible to end up doing business with someone you don't know, have never seen, and may not even be able to find information about using reasonable resources. Some online auction sites offer "feedback" areas where customers engage in conversations about their online experiences with a particular seller that has auctioned off goods before on that particular site.
You should read all feedback on a seller before doing business with them. In the absence of such information, you may want to consider doing business with someone else whose transaction history you can verify. Try seeing if the seller has an e-mail address listed. Contact them and ask for information about other satisfied customers that they might have that you can contact or a "feedback" listing on another auction site that you can reference.
When you use a physical store or a catalog to make your purchases, you know where to turn to if you have problems. Online it is often difficult to know exactly where the business entity that you are dealing with resides. You want more than just a Web address, look on the site for a street address and phone number. Be cautious if the seller's only contact information is a post office box that does not denote the location of their actual business!
Make sure you know whether or not you are buying from someone outside the U.S.?
The World Wide Web is exactly what you're dealing with. The entire world has access to it. Are you going to be dealing with someone who is selling to you under their laws (in their country) or yours? This is a serious question for consideration. The rest of the world tends not to have as many rights protecting the consumer as the U.S. A seller located in another country might be operating off of laws that the buyer is not familiar with. Before making a business transaction with an International seller you may want to do some research into what countries laws they adhere to when selling to U.S. consumers, their laws or U.S laws!
How much experience does a seller have selling the particular good or service you want?
If you are purchasing an item or service that in your opinion is not that vital to you business wise, personally, or financially, you might be willing to take more risk with purchasing goods or services. Sometimes you may be spending large sums of money. You may be purchasing goods and services vital to life or business. You may want to make sure that you purchase these goods or services from sellers who are qualified to sell and possibly service the goods if needed and offer alternative services if applicable.
The laws in the U.S. tend to provide more protection for the consumer if the seller is highly experienced in selling the goods and services that the consumer has purchased. Such sellers are held to a higher legal standard than a seller who is not familiar with a particular good or service that they are providing. If you are buying a product made by a major manufacturer, you may be able to purchase it through an authorized seller! Authorized sellers (Authorized Dealers) usually are held to a higher standard of pricing, ethics, service and other consumer concerns than a general-purpose seller. You may get better warranty service if you buy from an authorized seller. You can call the manufacturer of the product you're interested in, or visit the manufacturer's Web site to check if the operator of a site has been authorized to sell the manufacturer's product.
Using Technology to get the lowest price!
Some Web sites offer an "electronic agent". This utility is used to search the Web for sites that sell the products or services you want at the lowest prices. These programs are referred to as "Bots". Many sites that have database records will block "Bots" from searching their records, sometimes for security reasons and other times for dubious reasons. This technology is useful but it's not perfect, these utilities usually don't take into account any shipping and handling or freight charges that might be assessed by the seller. Furthermore you won't get any feedback from a site that uses tactics to block these utilities from gathering such information from their site.
Make sure that the seller is still in business?
Web sites can hang out in cyberspace forever (theoretically) without being edited, updated, or removed when the business is no longer in existence. You might wish to telephone or send an e-mail to be sure the seller is still in operation, particularly if the Web site's material appears to be old or out of date. Check to see if the page has been updated! Many up to date browsers cache Web pages. What this means is if you frequently access a Web page your browser picks up on this and stores that page information in your computer systems memory. Each time you access that particular Web page your browser accesses the page information from your system memory instead of accessing the information from the server where the Web page resides.
Browsers such as: Netscape Navigator TM or Microsoft Internet Explorer® save frequently accessed pages. You should click (reload) Netscape Navigator TM or (refresh) Microsoft Internet Explorer®. Even after you have reloaded or refreshed a page you may still be dealing with outdated information, check whether the seller indicates when the information was last updated.
Be wary of claims made by the seller!
There is a big difference between the claims made by a seller that are the sellers "opinion" as opposed to a sellers "description" of a product or service. Your legal claim to a seller's opinion is usually difficult if not impossible to prove in court. However any description of the product made by a seller that it can be proven that the seller made and can be further proven are false are observed in a court of law.
For example: (This software is the best software on the market.) This is an "opinion" and can not be proven or disproved. (This software comes with technical support free of charge.) If the consumer is denied technical support, there is legal recourse that can be taken. A "descriptive" claim was made by the seller, if it can be proven that the seller made the claim (usually in writing, commercials and other advertising's) and further proven that their claim was false (no tech support was provided) this can be observed by a court of law.
Price isn't everything but its certainly one of the most important things!
Make sure you know whether the product is being sold as new or used, be suspicious of prices that are too good to be true. If you don't price compare you may end up paying too much for goods and services. Always comparison-shop, online or offline, before you buy.
Buying a Rolex online can be like buying it out of the shop of an Authorized Rolex Dealer, or it can be like buying it out of the trunk of "Freddie", the watch guy's car. Is the seller offering a real brand-name item, or just a replica? Most manufacturers of fine products have a seal or trademark that identifies their product and/or authorized dealers/sellers. Check the site for a guarantee of the product's authenticity.
Convenience and Ergonomics can cost you big bucks if you don't watch out!
Double check your order before clicking send/save/enter/OK/finish or any other button or keyboard stroke that will finalize the transaction. Check the online form. Make sure all information is correct, this doesn't just mean your personal and financial information (e-mail address, credit card info) it also means price amounts, quantity (amount of items ordered), product ID numbers and all form data. You might inadvertently enter "55" as a quantity of an item ordered instead of "5".
Many shopping sites utilize electronic order forms and shopping cart software applications that help the consumer keep track of items, product numbers, quantities and other data. In addition to this it will provide the consumer with an on-screen itemization and form data verification page prior to finalizing the transaction. This page should not be taken lightly, verify all of the information on the page before finalizing the transaction.
Any site worth purchasing from is going to provide legal terms for referencing!
The problem is that different sites have different methods of displaying their legal information. Check for a link on the page that will take you to their "Legal Terms" or "Disclaimers". Sometimes you might find that the "(c) 1999" at the bottom of a home page is such a link. Some sites may only give you this information after you start making purchasing arrangements on their site. You might be prompted to read a text box containing "Legal Terms" or "Disclaimers" and click "I agree" or "I disagree". Whether or not your acceptance of the terms and disclaimers is legally binding or not is open to debate by the various courts in this country and others. Some courts uphold these online choices of "I agree" or "I disagree" as being legally binding other courts don't. It is simpler to determine for yourself whether or not you "accept" or "reject/decline" the terms and conditions, do business or go elsewhere.
Look for returns, refunds and shipping policies!
It is the usual tendency of a sales, marketing and advertising strategists to place greater emphasis on making the actual sales pitch, pumping up the product or service or promoting the company or seller itself/themselves than to give the consumer information about the policies concerning refunds, returns and shipping. You may not find such information on the home page or in any visible area of the site. It may be necessary to view the small print at the bottom of some page on the site or click on a link to view the material. If you can't find their policies on these issues you should e-mail them a request for the information. They should respond to your e-mail with the location of the information (so you can view it at their site) or e-mail you the actual information (but not as an "exe" attachment).
This information should answer the following questions:
Remember earlier when we informed you not to confuse the sellers "opinion" with the sellers "description" of the goods or services? It should be noted that some sellers will back up their "opinions" by providing a "guarantee". This means that they can legally be held accountable for their "guaranteed" "opinion" or "claim". However this should not be confused with a "warranty".
A warranty should be a "written statement" that details how the seller is going to handle matters concerning their products or services failure to live up to it's claims in the eyes of the consumer. If the seller provides a written warranty, it must be made available to you before you buy the item. You should review the warranty carefully before purchasing the goods or services. Look for the same information when you buy online as you would when you buy from a store or catalog such as:
It is highly advised that the consumer should not purchase such items or services online. There's a lot more information that a consumer should be aware of if they are going to risk purchasing items that have limitations on warranties. Consumers should know what their rights are and what recourse of action is available to them if they experience problems with goods or services.
You should look into information concerning the following subjects online or offline:
What documentation should be collected and maintained concerning your purchase?
Keeping adequate records of your online purchases is very important; it also involves a great deal more work than purchasing offline. The following documentation should be collected and maintain:
(There's a 3D animated fly in my virtual-reality soup!)
Always find out whom to contact in order to register a complaint or answer questions concerning the goods or services provided by the seller! Many sites have multiple product and service contact options that may include: (800#s, tolled phone numbers, physical mailing addresses, P.O. Boxes, fax #s and e-mail addresses) just to name a few.
Furthermore they may designate a particular method of contact for a particular type of consumer concern. They generally keep the most immediate and convenient forms of communication reserved for sales, orders, and other income related issues, and reserve the more delayed and inconvenient forms of communication for the "consumer complaints" or "customer service issues". However there are other alternatives if you fail to get the customer satisfaction you are seeking from the seller.
"The Art of Complaining" is a great book if you want to learn what a letter of complaint should contain, http://www.productsservicesideas.com/complaining.html
The Better Business Bureau is a tremendous resource for registering complaints or looking for complaints registered against a seller. http://www.bbb.org/ The Better Business Bureau also maintains an online forum for help with consumer related issues. There, you are able to search for an online seller's compliance with BBB Online policies by checking to see if the online seller carries the BBB Online Reliability and Privacy Seals http://www.bbbonline.org/
It should be dully noted that the number of sites carrying or seeking to carry this seal is limited. Compliance is not mandatory but voluntary. The BBB Online checks to see that the seller maintains compliance and keeps reports of their compliance or failure to comply. The BBB Online does not assume the responsibility of the seller's failure to comply nor does it take any action if they fail to comply (beyond documenting the seller's failure to comply). The BBB Online provides you with a legitimate source of information about the sites claims concerning goods, services and warrantees.
Use, "The Federal Trade Commission's Consumer Complaint Form" at: http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/complaint.htm or the Office of the State Attorney General in your state or the state where the seller is located for information. Which can be accessed through the National Association of Attorney's General http://www.naag.org/ . This is a great resource for legal information concerning the laws governing the Internet and commerce, as well as registering a complaint.