How Can You Tell If A Site Is Legit or Not?

Holiday Shopping is upon us - and many of us get excited about finding a great price on the things we love! A few days ago a friend of mine shared a site with me that popped up when she was viewing one of my post on UGG Boots. The prices "were to good to be true" and from a site that looked perfect; but I had never heard of and I certainly had never seen UGG boots so cheap. My years of blogging instinct kicked in and I wanted to inform readers to BEWARE of where you shop!

Here is just a little information I discovered about a website that was displaying Classic UGG Boots for like $50 bucks!

-Established less than 30 days ago
-Set up in China - although it shows its based right here in the USA (registered phone number and city is China)
-Set up with a FREE email address - which doesn't always mean it's bad - however this particular one looks suspicious
-It follows a huge pattern of fraudulent or fake selling patterns
-Website has been newly registered with a short life expectancy - which is strange.

One of my favorite ways to verify if a checkout or payment page is secure (SSL) or protected is - if it DOES NOT have a https in the beginning of the web address - maybe it will have nothing or it will have a http - it's NOT secure.

Example - when I went to Woot - it shows www.woot.com, however when you click to purchase something and you go to checkout to enter your payment info - it turns to a https web address. This particular page I was browsing on the UGGS does NOT - it stays www. the whole way through.

If the website does not have a contact us page, or it if does and it only offers a form to fill out, this is a strong indicator of fraud. Any company offering products or services, should have a place of business (location) as well as a phone number and email to contact them. If none of this information is available, then they likely just want your credit card info

Stick with the sites you know or the sites that I bring you! I don't always catch everything, however you'll see many sites that I post over and over again and this is because I typically have had really good experiences from these places or I've researched reviews.

To name a few of my favorite sites that you may not have heard:

-6pm.com - it's a sister site of Zappos company which is under Amazon
-Woot.com - subsidiary of Amazon
-Cowboom - subsidiary of Best Buy

Trust your instincts – If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is. If you ever feel a site isn’t legitimate, don’t enter any personal information, and leave immediately

You can always use the site http://www.scamadviser.com to find out more information about a website.

Thanks My Music City Mommy!