The Consumers’ Association warns against ‘December fake shops’ next month. These webshops look professional and realistic. They often also have a Chamber of Commerce number, a real address, an iDeal payment option and a quality mark. In some cases, these fake shops even distribute flyers.
The fake shops mainly focus on the popular items of the moment that are slightly higher priced. This mainly concerns iPhones, Macbooks, Airpods and toys. The Consumers’ Association therefore warns that consumers should be extra alert with these types of articles.
The Consumers’ Association has also given a number of tips with which you could recognize fake shops. For example, they gave the tip to search for customer reviews where the entire address is used as a search term, such as ‘www.webshop.nl‘. They also gave the tip to check how long the website has been around. Via sidn.nl (for websites with .nl) or whois.icann.org (for sites with .com, .org and .net) you can see how long a site has been active. In most cases, fake shops have not been active that long.
The last tip was to pay close attention to items that are too discounted, if something is too good to be true, then it will be.
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