Busting Online Discount Scams

posted on Thursday, April 15th, 2010 at 1:59 am

With the proliferation of spammers and unscrupulous scammers, more people are becoming wary about web-based promos. Of course, they should be; but to keep your doors closed to the wonders of product discounts online is throwing away the opportunity of saving good money. The point is, despite the number of fraudulent activities on the internet, legitimate promos, to the advantage of consumers, still exist. You only have to be more aware about the background of certain sites for you to determine the legitimacy of these sites. Here are some tips on how to take advantage of online promos without falling prey into the hands of cyber-swindlers:

Tips on How to Find Out If an Online Promo is Legit

Online Discounts - Online Scam

1.Check the website’s background.

Most of the time, it’s really hard to spot a sham site. If you will take most of these sites by face value you can be duped. Good thing there are simple methods to uncover their deceitful backgrounds. Among the many ways are: back link analysis and checking the sites policy, terms and conditions. For more of this, consulting an internet expert can be a very big help.

2.Be aware and beware about spam mails.

If your email is suddenly flooded with spam mails after browsing the site, then there is a large chance that you have just entered a spam domain. If this happens, you can immediately report the website to Google. You can also warn other people about this site to discourage the spammers’ illegal activity.

3.Scrutinize the promo mechanics

Sometimes, due to the huge amount of discounts offered, we tend to overlook the deceitful nature of a promo. Promos offering enormous amount of benefits in exchange of little money or sometimes, nothing at all deserves a closer scrutiny. You must ask yourself: “What’s the catch?” Common sense tells us that no business will let loose big amounts of cash in exchange of nothing.
To sum it up, it is very important to be very critical about discounts and promos. If not, it will be a liability instead of an asset for you. So next time you see a promising promo online, inspect the company’s track record first.


2 Responses to “Busting Online Discount Scams”

  1. Barbara Ashmore says:

    it’s sad that there are people out there who live by scamming others. but what can we do? let’s just be very careful with our transactions.

  2. Scott says:

    yeah, let’s be very careful. this is a good article by the way.