money.gifA lot of people buy things online today, the trend is growing, but there are still people that think that buying things online is the most unsafe thing you can do and refuse to take that plunge into the realm of online shopping.

There are a lot of benefits to making purchases online. One of the main benefits is convenience; you don’t have to leave your home to buy what it is you want to buy. Another benefit is selection; sometimes the thing you want might not be in a store near you, but you can find many things online. And the biggest benefit that Ive found is price. Being that there is so much competition and the online stores have a lot of their cost cut by selling you the items online, most times you can find things online cheaper than you can find them in stores. Those three reasons are reason enough to try out this online shopping thing.

Now I’m not going to try to act like there aren’t any downfalls with online shopping. For one, you have to wait for your item, and there are shipping costs associated with making purchases. If you’re not careful those shipping cost could potentially make a good deal turn into the same deal available at a local store. Next you don’t get to handle the item your buying before you buy it, if its clothing you cant try it on, if it’s a tool, you cant hold it to see how good the quality of that tool is before you buy, and god forbid if you have to take something back, you may have problems there. And the most important downfall is making sure no one steals your credit card information or rips you off. Well Hopefully These next few tips will be enough so that you don’t have to worry about the latter as much.

Pre-Purchase Preparation

If you know your about to make purchases online, the first thing you probably would want to do is to make sure your PC is free from viruses and spy ware, or anything that could potentially harm your online transactions.  (This article is assuming you are using a Windows machine) Make sure you have a reliable antivirus program installed, and while you’re at it, get a separate antispyware program also. Here is a list of a few I like to use

-Nod 32
-Ad aware
-Spybot search and destroy

Notice I have 2 antispyware programs listed. It is pretty common for people to use 2 antispyware programs, But you really only want to have one antivirus program running. Make sure you update the definitions of those programs and run them all to make sure that your system is clean. If you find anything, let the program remove it and if it cant be removed by your software, that’s when you should start looking for identification of what has infected your system and start searching for help to remove the infection.

Next, update Windows, Go to windowsupdate.com and let the windows updater patch your version of windows, at least with all the critical patches (you can leave the rest alone if you don’t want to wait through all the downloads etc) Hint: if for some reason you don’t want too, or cant use windowsupdate.com, you can go to autopatcher.com and download the autopatcher program that will install most of the updates on your version of windows.

Research

The next thing you want to do once you feel confident that your system is free from nasties, is do some research on the product you want to buy. Do a search in Google for the product you want to buy see what shows up. I like to find places where users and visitors write their personal reviews on items they actually bought. There are a few places you can go to find that information. Amazon.com usually have user comments and ratings on every item listed on the site, look your item up there and see what others are saying about that item. Other places that have user submitted reviews and such are buy.com, epinions.com, avsforums, yelp, cnet and resellerratings.com

Also, another thing you should probably do is get an email address that you use for shopping. Most places online require you to sign up to the site or a valid email address so that they have somewhere to send the invoice and other information about your purchase. So it would be a good idea to have a valid email handy that you use for those purposes. If not, get one. I recommend yahoo or google mail.

Payment Options

Ok this part scares a lot away from online shopping, the reason is that in most if not all cases, you will have to send your credit card information across the internet to make that purchase. That’s why the whole antivirus and antispyware checking is important, you don’t want anything on your computer that will send that information to other places when you make purchases. Here are a few things you can do to help ease the horror of sending your credit card info over the “series of tubes” (unlike a truck) that we all know as the internet.

A lot of banks and other stores sell Visa gift cards, they aren’t hard to find. They work just like any other gift card. You buy the gift card at your local Walgreen’s or your bank, you specify an amount you want on the gift card, and you will get a visa card that has a balance of the amount you paid. If you bought a $50 card, you’d have a $50 balance, once it’s used up, you through the card away. These cards can be used just like any other visa card so you can use them to make online purchases, and if for some strange reason, the number on that card was stolen, you’d only loose what was on the card, and not the whole balance limit on your primary credit card or checking account (in the case of people that use visa check cards/debit cards).

Another option you have is have a “limited use” checking account with a visa check card. How this would work is, open up a checking account at your bank that would be separate from your primary checking account. Get a debit/check card for that account, and only put money in that account, and just enough, when you want to buy something online. That way you have more control over what would be available if someone would happen to steal that credit card number, and they wouldn’t have access to your whole life savings or bill money.

Another option of payment that you see pretty often online is the use of paypal. For those that don’t know, Papal works similar to the “limited use” checking account I spoke about above. You create an account with papal and you associate one of your checking accounts or credit cards with the papal account. When you want to make a purchase you transfer an amount from the account you have associated with papal, to your papal account. When you make that purchase the balance that is in your papal account would be the balance that you have available to make that purchase. On the website where you’re making that purchase, it will offer the option to pay with papal and you’d click that option. Then it will take you to papal and you’d have to sign in with your name and password. The item that you are buying will show up on the papal cart along with the online store you are buying the item for and you authorize it and the money that is in your papal account will be what is used to pay for the item.

You see the option to use papal enough that it would probably be a good idea to sign up for a papal account if you plan to do some online shopping.

Checkout time

Now you’ve secured your computer, you got your forms of payment straight, you have researched your product, and you’re ready to make your purchase. The first thing you will want to do is make sure you read the products description carefully to make sure you are indeed buying what you want. Sometimes the picture may show more than what really comes with the item, and you don’t want to think your buying a television and DVD player but its really just a DVD player. Also, make sure you read over the return and shipping policy, if there is a situation where you have to send something back, you want to know how it works with that particular site, many sites have many different ways of handling returns and shipping, As you go through the checkout process, also make sure you read everything. Make sure they don’t sneak in options or accessories that you don’t want. Sometimes, you will see where a site will offer you something extra and the box to get that extra item will be checked. If you’re not paying attention you would’ve bought that extra item without knowing.

Another thing you want to make sure you do not do is let the website or your browser save your information. A lot of the times they will offer you the option of saving your credit card info for future purchases. There may not be anything wrong with doing so but me personally I just don’t trust saving anything like that. At the end of your checkout process there is usually a receipt or invoice that will show up on the screen, they will usually send that to your email address but it would be a good idea to print that out and keep that for your own person records. You never know when you’d need it again

Now that you’ve made your purchase, sit back and wait for it so show up knowing you made a very good effort to be as safe as possible with your venture in the online marketplace.

For more information about you can check out the second episode of the Jonzee.com podcast where I talked about a lot of what is written in this article
DOWNLOAD THAT EPISODE HERE