Can We Really Trust Online Sales After All?

The other day, I found myself in need of a very specific adapter cable.

Since this is 2018, I did what any tech-literate consumer would do: I looked online. I found one in a well-known box store’s online shop on the cheap. It was fulfilled through an international seller, so it had no return policy.

After a few days, it arrived. And it wasn’t what I needed at all.

I couldn’t return it, and there was no refund option. But, I didn’t spend very much on it, so I just trashed it and looked for the right part.

Then, I realized how absurd that was.

Somehow, we’ve allowed ourselves to be okay with a marketplace where we can enter into transactions without certainty. Imagine walking into a brick-and-mortar, handing over your money, and realizing you didn’t get what you paid for. Then imagine resigning yourself to your mistake and forgoing a refund.

For whatever reason though, we’ve allowed ourselves to accept dodgy customer service for the slightly lower prices of online sales. And personally, I’m tired of it.

The unfortunate reality is that online shopping is here to stay. And that includes all the risk involved.

But, not all is lost. There are a number of ways to ensure that your expectations are met even when shopping online.

The most obvious tool is user reviews. But it’s more than just looking at the average star rating. Look through the one-star reviews. You’ll usually be able to tell if there’s a real issue with the product itself, or if the customer had an issue with the seller. Or, if the customer is just being unreasonable.

If you’re looking to buy a niche product, product review sites are helpful. These sites run their own independent tests on different products and post reviews with their results. Just make sure that they outline their review process to verify that it’s trustworthy.

It’s also a good idea to keep your shopping restricted to reputed marketplaces. You don’t need to keep your shopping restricted to Amazon, but make sure that whatever marketplace you use has seller protection in case something goes awry. That could be a community moderated forum or PayPal’s fraud protection. You just want to make sure that if you do have an issue, you have recourse.

We’re never going to have the same certainty shopping online as we have in physical stores. But with a little know how, we can keep ourselves from being taken advantage of.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to find this adapter…