The first, ninth and last piece of advice is the best.
My first month as a Solopreneur of (Sicaly: an
online Jewellery store) made me understand how terrified and weary people are of purchasing items from unpopular online stores in Nigeria.
In today’s world, there are numerous scam stories of innocent people who were duped on their hard-earned money in the name of buying online.
A young lady once told me of a footwear online vendor who swore and promised her that she was “God-fearing” and would never scam her else God would punish her,
The young lady took her word for the truth; it turned out that the vendor was yet another scammer.
Photo credit Sicaly.com an online Jewelry store based in Nigeria.
In this article, we will talk about ways you can spot these sham jewelry online stores.
The first on our list is
1. There is no face or name behind the brand;
There are lots of faceless stores and businesses online today; no matter how much you search the Internet for information about them, or go through their social media pages, you will hardly find any valuable information about their owners.
It’s not a coincidence, it’s a deliberate action by them to prevent you from knowing who to hold accountable when things go wrong.
Please ignore them
2. No reviews online.
In this age of Trustpilot, Google my business, Fera and so on, every business dedicated to selling things online should be registered on at least one customer review website.
I know scammers can buy reviews, but at least they can’t stop aggrieved customers from dropping negative reviews about their poor services,
Always be on the look out for reviews
3. They are not on Twitter or aren’t active on Twitter.
This may sound weird, you may be saying to yourself right now, is it compulsory for a business to be on Twitter?
Well, it’s not compulsory but it’s very necessary and I will explain why.
Twitter has an inbuilt search engine meaning that when you search for anything on twitter, everything ever posted with/about that word or sentence will appear.
Scammers hate this.
Once you call these sham online stores for their shitty ways, the information remains there. So, unless you bring down the post or your account gets suspended, your complaint is going nowhere.
When an intending buyer searches for anything regarding that particular store, boom! Complaints show up.
It’s almost impossible to search out conversations on Instagram and Facebook, that’s why Facebook and Instagram especially Instagram remains the favourite app for scammers
4. They will never agree to make/post a live video of their products and when they do, there is hardly any proof that it belongs to them.
(This does not apply to big jewelry companies like Tiffany and Co)
Oh yes, many of us have come across of that small business owner who will never agree to make a live video of his/her products. Please don’t waste your time on them, just run!
5. They have no content or articles on the internet.
Scammers have no time for all of that, unless they are big time scammers.
For a small online store scammer, making videos for YouTube or creating blog articles about their products and services is very stressful.
So they just run ads and wait for their preys to surface.
6. The bank account you are paying into doesn’t match with their business name or the name of the store owner.
They are trying their best not to get caught so they will do all they can to avoid falling into any trap.
This is a very big sign to watch out for.
7. They don’t have a proper web store nor do they sell in a market place
In this age of e-commerce, an online store that does not own a domain name, own a dot com store or at least sell in a market place may be fake especially when they focus solely on Instagram.
8. No knowledge on Jewelry management/care tips
Any Jewelry online store without any valuable knowledge on how to manage the Jewelry they sell may be a sham store.
9. They have no certification.
A certificate of authenticity from a credible institute Eg. GIA institute, is the only way you can certify your gemstone jewelry is real.
Some online Jewelers share videos via their social media platform where they use jewelry testers to test their stones.
While this is a common practice it shouldn’t be widely accepted and that is because a Jewelry tester can be fooled.
A good number of ‘diamonds' and other gemstones sold online and in brick stores are man made/lab made stones.
They are very much similar and ‘perfect' that a jewelry tester will mistake them for real stone.
Even though lab made diamond is still diamond and not fake, you still do not want to be deceived or made to pay more for something that should cost less.
10. No refund and return policy.
No Jewelry artisan, vendor, company or designer is perfect, a store with no refund or return policy is a Jewelry online store that doesn’t intend to turn buyers into long-term customers and that’s the goal of every sham online Jewelry store.
All they want to do is to scam people change their business name and continue.
The truth is, you can follow these rules and still get scammed especially if you are based in a third world country like Nigeria where the police department isn’t fully equipped to fight cyber-criminals, but if you watch out carefully and follow the advice listed here, it will certainly help to reduce your risk of getting scammed by any sham Jewelry online store.
Thank you.
Yours Sicaly
Sicaly.com
