Commissioner for Consumer Protection, Gary Newcombe has warned that the Festive Season can be especially profitable for scammers.
Mr Newcombe said this year so far, about 200 Western Australians had reported to WA ScamNet that they had been tricked out of almost $700,000 while shopping online — with Christmas still to come.
He said fake websites and social media pages pretended to sell everything from barbecues to motor-homes, but consumers never received the items, nor saw their money again.
“It is very easy to be fooled, with fake websites often looking very professional and sometimes stealing the identity of a well-known retailer or brand,” Mr Newcombe said.
“Furthermore, the items for sale may be offered at very low prices in a bid to trigger a shopper’s excitement to bag a bargain.
“While the WA ScamNet team has managed to shut down around 200 fake websites and almost 100 social media pages, the scam sites often quickly re-appear under different names.”
The Commissioner said this meant it would never be possible to close down every fake site and page, so online shoppers needed to be confident the site was genuine before entering their personal and financial information during a purchase.
“The best warning sign that a retail website is a scam is the method of payment,” he said.
“Be very suspicious if scammers ask you to pay via electronic funds transfer or using a money order, pre-loaded money card or a crypto currency such as Bitcoin, as it is rare to recover money that is sent this way.”
Mr Newcombe said another important tip was to look at the overall quality of the website, grammatical errors in text, poorly edited images and whether the business provided an actual address for its location.
