I'm not sure if this goes here but.. Are Online Shops usually reliable?? I want to buy some thing from overtherainbowshop.. does anyone know if this is a good reliable place to shop?? :eusa_doh: :rolleyes:
Re: Question.. no not really and thanks mark ... ur alot of help lol jk mark.. does anyone know?:bang:
Well I work for an online shop which is reliable, so maybe I am biased. I buy quite a lot of stuff online and haven't had any problems with companies in this country (I don't buy online from abroad). Make sure the company has their contact details, with a full postal address (not a PO Box) and their telephone number on the site. In the UK they should also show their company registration number, registered office and VAT registration number. There are probably similar details to look for in your country. Call the phone number, see how long they take to answer, and ask a question about one of the products (what size it is, whether it's in stock, etc). See if they can get the answers (if all they can do is take a message and say someone will call back they they are probably a small organisation using a call centre). This helps you establish whether there is a real company behind the site or not. Make sure the postage and packing charges, returns policy, complaints procedure and privacy policy etc are available and easy to find. Read them! Check what gateway they use for the credit card payments. With the amount of regulations affecting online credit card transactions now (at least in the UK, I'm not sure elsewhere), only the bigger companies can comply while taking the card details through their own site. Most smaller companies will use a third-party gateway like WorldPay for their card payments (this way the company never sees your card details, only the gateway does). I generally think having payments through something like WorldPay is a good sign. Enter the company name into Google and look for other peoples comments about them (if you can find any). You are more likely to find grumbles about bad companies than praise of good companies, so if you don't find much that's probably a good sign. There will always be a few unhappy customers, no matter how good the company (often because stuff is out of stock or gets lost in the post). If you pay by credit card and the store do not deliver the goods or refund your money, you can ask the credit card company to issue a "chargeback". This basically means they take the money back from the shop and put it back on your card. Most credit card companies tend to side with the customer rather than the shop. If you are still in doubt, just order something low value initially and see what the service is like. If it is OK then place a bigger order.
I buy 99% of everything online, as well as doing all my banking and bill paying online. Never had any problems. I also use a credit card or for my monthly bills, bank transfer. I don't use paypal, shop ebay either.
Not sure if anybody said this yet, I only skimmed the above, heh (I just woke up). But make damn sure that the payment gateway uses an SSL certificate. This may seem like common sense, but I was a second away from purchasing something myself when I noticed that that little padlock icon was not present. Yeah, that would have been bad. What does an SSL certificate look like? Go somewhere like http://www.gmail.com and take a look at your web browser's interface. It's in a different spot depending on the browser, but you'll see a little padlock if the subdomain is protected by an SSL. Some browsers will color the address bar when the page you're viewing is protected. I hope that was helpful ^^
Good point Steam. Any site that asks for credit card details without SSL must be run by incompetent amateurs.....
It depends. If it runs through paypal, it's perfectly fine. Otherwise... hm. It's hard to say, but I've ordered from a lot of shops over the net with perfect success so far.
I usually find online shops to be fine. I've bought a bunch of stuff online and I always usually seem to get it. A lot of its sort of common sense, if it looks unreliable, then don't buy it... also, if you are buying off ebay or somewhere with costumer reveiws make sure it has good ones ^_^
