Online Scams

I recently got into photography so decided to upgrade from my cell camera to some high resolution digital camera. You can find good digital cameras from $20 to $2000+ so the first question in my mind was what's good for a person with my expertise and wallet size. My first stop was www.cnet.com. It's the best site I know to check out average consumer's, as well as professional's, reviews. You can also get good estimate of price offered for the item for most products featured on the website. If you can't find anything suitable for you on CNET or if you are confused between multiple products with equal ratings then you can go to an electronics store like Best Buy or Circuit City and ask for assistance. I've heard they are not always helpful but if you bother them enough I'm sure they'll dish out some useful information, especially if you can impress them by using some technical jargon you just learned on CNET.

So back to my hunt for the perfect camera. From editor and consumer reviews, I decided to go with Nikon D90 SLR. It's pretty impressive with 12 some mega pixels, live view and all those things. Average price for the camera is about $1000, which is way out of my budget so I decided to search online. Like 99.9% webbies out there looking for information, I went on google.com. The first link it turned up was ShopDigitalDirect.com where camera was $589. It came with USA Warranty and had the certification of secure site. Without wasting another brain cell I gave up my credit card information and ordered the camera.

The next day I got an email saying they are out of stock. I tried two more websites, www.ontimedigital.com and one more site. They responded in similar way so I called up the last website I tried. This drunk guy answered the phone and mumbled he's got a $1290 camera package or something. I was like 'what's on your website then?' He replies, 'that's nothing'. Before I could ask anything else he hung up. This is when red lights went off in my mind and again I turned to google.com. This time in search area I typed the website name and the word 'scam'. My fears turned into reality when it brought back 200,000+ hits with people giving warning that these websites are actually frauds! I contacted my bank and explained what had happened.

So lesson of the day is, do your research if you don't want to take risk with online shopping. When you find a deal too good to be true, then usually it is. Search for the reviews on the website from multiple sources. Many electronics sold online are not intended to be sold in USA because of defects. Many websites take away the standard accessories and will sell them to you for extra charges. If you'll try to return the item you bought for refund, they will deduct "re-stocking fees", which is usually 15% of the price.

In the end I'd say it's better to pay few dollars more than to compromise your personal information to these scams.