How to Check if an Online Store is a COVID Scam

The unprecedented global coronavirus pandemic caused uncertainty among people which led to panic buying during the initial stages. Even though things have settled down now, a slowdown in the global supply chain has made many essential and non-essential items scarce or unavailable. As a result, people are searching online for these things and scammers are ready to take advantage of this.

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, many consumers are looking for products like:

• Face masks,
• Antibacterial soap,
• Corona test kits,
• and even medicines or vaccines

We receive numerous complaints about scam shops selling these items at the moment that:

• Never deliver the product
• Deliver a fake and in some cases even dangerous product
• Use your payment details to take more money from you
• How to Identify an Online COVID Scam

Consider the following tips when you are looking for products to protect yourself and your family from the COVID virus:

• Be extremely suspicious: As stated, it is very unlikely retailers have medicines or vaccines for COVID in stock. Most of these products are distributed by the authorities at this time (as they should be).
• Only buy from reputable stores and websites: Do not trust websites that have been up for a few days or weeks. You can check this by entering the URL on Scamadviser and scrolling down to the ‘Key Facts’.
  
  
• Do not trust consumer reviews: Reviews on the website itself are often fake. Also, reviews on platforms like Trustpilot and Resellerrating are increasingly fake. Check the reviews of individual persons. Did they leave multiple reviews for multiple websites over a long period of time? These reviews can be trusted more. 
  
  
• Contact the company: Call the company and ask pertinent questions such as how they got supplies, from whom, how fast they expect to deliver and more. Check if they are registered as a company. If you cannot find a valid professional email address (do not trust Gmail and other free email addresses), phone number and physical address, it is likely to be a scam. 
  
  
• Do not trust product claims: There are very few authentic cures for COVID. Product statements claiming they can protect you against or cure the virus are false. The only solution is to make sure you stay in good health upon that when you get the virus, your body has the strength to resist it. You can read about the medically recognized treatments for COVID here.
  
  
• Only pay with reliable payment methods: Use payment methods that allow you to get your money back in case the product is not delivered or fake, like PayPal, credit card or an "after delivery payment method" such as Klarna or Afterpay. If in the order process the web site states that these payment methods are not available due to technical issues and you can pay in cryptocurrency or via wire transfer, you can be sure it is a scam. Know more about safe payment methods.

For more tips on avoiding scams, read our article on "How to Recognize a Scam".