Identify Fake Products While Shopping Online: During the festival season, most of the e-commerce companies including Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal etc. are offering great offers on the purchase of online products and services. But while shopping online during these time you should be very careful and attentive, otherwise you may have to suffer huge losses.
Actually during these festival season, online scammer and fraudulent gangs become very active. Also, lots of fake products are sold on a large scale by many e-commerce company sellers.
According to a survey conducted recently , more than one-third of fake and duplicate products are being sold by many e-commerce websites. So if you are planning to do online shopping, then some important things should be taken care of. This will help you to prevent of being a victim of online fraud.
So in this article you will know how to identify fake products while doing online shopping.
1. Check Website Link
Most of the online frauds takes place from the fake websites. Most often people get high discounts and exclusive deals on websites like Flipkart or Amazon from WhatsApp or any other messaging app and a link is given with this exclusive offer, which can be a fake link. So, if you click on those links then there is a great chance that you may fall in scam.
In such a situation, before doing shopping online with the given link, you must check the website to be fake or real. And it is sure that if the website link is fake, then the product will definitely be fake.
So now the question arises how can we know that the website link is fake or real.
Here is the solution.
First of all you have to check the given link URL carefully. The real and original website URL will start from “https” and not from “http”. If the link doesn’t contain “https”, then the website is not secure for any kind of transaction.
In such a situation, always buy product from the website whose link address starts with https.
2. Match the Product with the Official Website
Each product has a model number mentioned along with the product. So note the model number of the product and compare it with the official website of that product.
For example, if you are going to buy smartphones online, then check for the IMEI number written on the box of the mobile and match it with the official website of the brand before purchasing the product to verify its authenticity.
Actually the e-commerce website sells many products through a third party seller. In such a situation, it becomes very difficult to identify original and fake products while purchasing.
So always try to check the authenticity of the product by comparing it with the official site product details.
3. Use Smart Consumer App
If you are a very busy person and don’t have enough time to check and match the product with the official website. Then there is another easiest way to do so.
Electronic and FMCG companies have started incorporating a special type of QR code and hologram in the product to protect it against fake products, using which genuine products can be identified.
Apart from this, there is an application called Smart Consumer App using which you can easily identify original and fake products.
For this you have to download this application from the Google Play Store.
After that, open the app and scan the QR code provided on the product or enter the QR number. After this, the app will provide you the manufacturing details of the product.
In this way, the product can be identified as real and fake.
4. Identify Manufacturing & Branding
Counterfeit goods can be identified with the company’s logo and spelling. Companies selling counterfeit/fake products make logo exactly similar. But this logo will be different from the original brand logo in many aspects.
Also the official producer of the product embed hologram in their products which cannot be copied by the fake company.
Thus while buying products online, you should always look at the logo of the brand carefully.
Also, the spelling of letters, font style, letter design etc. of the product should also be investigated properly.
5. Don’t Go For High Discounted Product
Now a days there is a trend going on to sell the product, i.e., to put high discount on the product. So many people lured by this high discount because they thought that the company is providing these discount due to sale season or offers.
But no company can offer discount as high as 60-80%. Because that 60-80 percent discount is not available on branded items, luxury products compared to MRP.
In such a situation, if seller is providing more than 60 to 70 percent discount on MRP, then understand that the item might be fake or duplicate.
So these are some of the methods through which you can identify original and fake product while shopping online and can stay safe from being the victim of online fraud.
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Thanks for Reading!