Receiving fake products instead of the genuine article is the biggest problem faced by online shoppers. According to a recent survey which was conducted by LocalCircles, more than 38% of the consumers out of 6,923 respondents had received fake products instead of original items from online shopping sites in the past year.
As per the survey, many customers received fake products while shopping for perfumes and fragrances on e-commerce sites. Other categories where there is a high incidence of fake products sold include shoes, sporting goods, fashion, apparels, and bags.
Recently there was big news where companies like Amazon, Flipkart, and Indiamart were under regulatory scanner for selling counterfeit, adulterated and unapproved cosmetics. Some of the products contained harmful ingredients, which were not permitted for use on humans.
If you receive fake product from the online shopping sites, you will not just lose your money. It’s also harmful to health. For instance, using fake cosmetics is harmful to skin and it might lead to skin diseases. So, it is very important to be careful while purchasing any products online. In this blog, we will discuss how to avoid purchasing fake products online.
Before purchasing any product online, you need to verify if the website is genuine. There are many fake websites which sell fake products, so be very careful. Check the contact details of the web portal. Every e-commerce site must display contact details on the website. You can contact the company on the contact number or customer care email ID displayed for any issues. Avoid shopping on portals which do not provide contact details.
A customer review is an experience shared by customers on products purchased or services availed of a particular company. It is a good habit to check company or product reviews, while shopping online. If you are shopping at a particular online shopping site for the first time, it is advisable to check reviews online. For instance, if the name of the company is Bagskart, you can check its review by typing Bagskart review on Google.
You can also check the reviews of a particular product. Flipkart and Amazon allow buyers to post reviews on each product purchased. For example: if you are planning to buy a bag on Amazon, you can check customer reviews on that particular product.
Genuine online shopping portals care about customer experience and spend good money on the website design. The websites which sell fake products have unprofessional designs and logos on the website.
You can also check the content on the website. Fake websites do not write detailed product descriptions and specifications. They write product descriptions and content, with a lot of grammatical errors.
See Also: How to avoid Online Shopping Fraud: Review by IndianMoney
To attract more customers, fake products are usually sold at a price considerably lower than the price of the original product. So, you should be very careful, if the product is sold at a price which is too good to be true. In such cases, you must compare the price of the products on other websites.
To check if the product is fake, you need to take a look at the picture of the product. If the picture looks unprofessional, or there is something wrong with the logo, there are high chances that the product might be fake.
Have a complaint against any company? IndianMoney.com's consumer complaints portal IamCheated.com can help you resolve the issue. Just visit Iamcheated.com and lodge your complaint. If you want to post a review on any company you can post it on Indianmoney.com review and complaint portal IamCheated.com.
