Shopping during the Black Friday sales and taking advantages of the best deals is always fun. But, with great sales also come with some Black Friday scam artists trying to scam you out of your money. In this article, we’re going to cover off on some top Black Friday frauds and how you can avoid them.
Non Delivery Scam
One type of scam that is predominant during Black Friday deals are non-delivery scams. Here, a brand will accept your order online, but will disappear when it comes to actually delivering your order. There are a few ways you can avoid shopping from such brands.
Firstly, you can always just stick with bigger brand names like Amazon, Target, Best Buy, etc that have a proven track record.
But, if one of your goals is to support smaller, local businesses, then there are a couple of other things you can look into to verify if the brand is legit. To start off with, make sure that the website has an SSL certificate. You can do this by checking the website’s URL. If it starts with HTTPS, it means that they have an SSL certificate. If it starts with HTTP and does NOT have an S at the end of it, it means that they do not have a certificate. For those who do not know, an SSL certificate is crucial for ensuring the website is encrypted and is safe to enter sensitive details such as a credit card number and your address.
The second option you have to ensure you don’t fall for this Black Friday shopping scam is by checking the brand’s reviews online. Chances are that if the brand has a track record of not delivering products, you’ll be able to find reviews on the internet stating the same.
If you have already fallen for the scam, we would recommend documenting any follow ups you have had with the seller mentioning that you have not received the order. You can use that communication to reach out to your credit card company or cash app brands like PayPal to help you get your money back.
Gift Card Scam
Is the seller asking for gift cards instead of asking you to pay via a credit card? That is a major red flag right there. It is highly unlikely that a legit business will ask you to pay them via gift cards from other brands.
Think of it this way. A legit business has bills and vendors to pay and employee salaries to send out. For these transactions, they will need cash in their bank accounts to make this payment. If they’re main source of income is coming through gift cards, it’s going to be quite a hassle to pay out people on a monthly basis. But, with scammers, it’s easier for them to steal money from you via a gift card.
If you have already fallen for the scam, we recommend you reach out to the company that issued the gift card. Chances are, they may be able to get you some, if not all of your money back, based on how much is still left on the gift card. The exact guidelines and rules depend from brand to brand.
Fake Charity Scam
Often, people like to donate more around the holidays. Keeping this in mind, fake charities pop up around the holiday season and during Black Friday sales with the aim to scam people out of their money. In order to avoid this Black Friday scam, we recommend that you read up about the charity before you send them a donation of any kind. You could also choose from a variety of recognized charities like Goodwill, American Red Cross, etc to donate.
If you have already fallen for the scam, you can report the fake charity to The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), and the Federal Trade Commission. You will likely not get your money back in this case, but by reporting them, you can help make sure others do not fall for the same scam.
Fake Website Scam
Sometimes, scammers create a website using a domain name that is very similar to a popular brand. They also make sure that the website experience is very similar, making people think they’re shopping with the authentic brand. People may fall for this scam since they don’t think twice due to how well scammers have set up this fraudulent website. But, if you keep an eye out on things like the domain name, slight discrepancies on the website, etc., you can save yourself from falling for such Black Friday scams.
If you have already fallen for the scam, we recommend that you reach out to your payment provider and block the card that you paid with and ask for a replacement. We also recommend reporting them to The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), and the Federal Trade Commission. Similar to the fake charity scam, you may likely not get your money back (based on how you paid on the website), but reporting the fraudulent website will prevent others for falling for the same scam.
Fake Order Scam
There are a lot of online orders that people place during the Black Friday sales and at times, scammers take advantage of this. What they do is send over an email about a fake order at a well known brand’s website. The email itself will likely be along the lines of checking your order status or asking you to urgently verify certain details if you do not want a negative repercussion (e.g. order getting cancelled, etc).
Some ways you can avoid getting scammed this way is by checking the email address of the sender and closely paying attention to the body of the email. When looking at the email address, similar to the fake website scam, the email address will likely be very close to the actual brand name. In some scenarios, scammers don’t even make an effort on the email address, and it is blatantly obvious that the email ID does not belong to the authentic brand.
In terms of the body of the email, there are a few subtle signs that can give away a scam. For example, hit the pause button and think to yourself – is this an order I placed? Does this line up with my recent order history with said brand? Sometimes, that’s enough for people to realize that the email is fake.
One other thing you can look into is if you’re checking your email on a computer, hover over the button / URL the email is trying to get you to click. As you hover over it, the bottom left of your browser will tell you where it will take you if you were to click on the link. Chances are, it will take you to a fraudulent website that is trying to install some sort of virus on your device in order to extract sensitive information such as credit card numbers, etc.
If you were able to catch the signs before clicking on the link, immediately hit on the ‘spam’ button within the email thread. If you have already fallen for the scam, we recommend changing your email’s password, running a security scan on your device, and of course, reporting the email to the authorities.
We hope you found this article helpful and will help you catch any Black Friday scams going forward! If there are other Black Friday scams we haven’t listed, comment below and we’ll add it to the article.
Looking for major Brands participating in the Black Friday Sale 2023? Stay tuned to out website for the latest updates.
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