Halloween is right around the corner. Time to find the perfect costume and the best decorations so you can outdo that guy down the street. So, you hop online and start hunting through all of the online Halloween shops offering up this year’s best deals and amazing prices.
You happily plug in your credit card number for each of those fantastic decorations and costumes and prepare to sit back and gloat when your neighbor gets his first look at your yard. But you wait, and you wait, but only a few packages show up.
Turns out, you got scammed. You ordered from some of the seasonal pop-up stores that never intended to ship your items, or cancelled your order without notification or reimbursement, sent you cheap inferior goods, or in some cases, maybe even shipped you an empty package.
This year, before placing an order with a seasonal store, make sure to look for the company’s physical address and phone number, look it up on the Better Business Bureau’s website (www.bbb.org) , look for information concerning the store’s return and refund policies, and always be careful about sharing your credit card information with an unsecure site. Secure sites will have a lock icon near the URL and an “s” in the web address after the “http”.