Scam-Detectives saves man from dodgy iPhone seller

I had a call from a client this afternoon. He’d broken his iPhone, and was looking for a good deal on a replacement. Unfortunately, he still has 12 months to run on his current mobile contract, and doesn’t want to commit to another bill, so he had to look for unlocked ones. Amazon has the 16GB 3GS in white for £587.99 but that was a bit on the rich side for him.

He called me because he’d found one for $325 (£212.00) but he wasn’t 100% confident about ordering it.

I checked out the site and immediately called him back to tell him not to touch it with a bargepole.

Why?

• The domain name was a free subdomain with no “whois” info available
• On loading the website, it spawned several popups for poker and ‘adult orientated’ websites
• There was no company logo or header on the site
• The website had only 2 products, both iphones and both vastly underpriced
• The website had no contact details beyond an anonymous “contact” form – no address, no telephone number, no company name, nothing.
• The order form required credit card details yet was not encrypted – although it did try to fake encryption by forcing a small padlock image to appear in the address bar
• There’s loads more “red flags” I could go on about, but I really don’t need to carry on!

When you’re looking for a great deal on electronics, or any other item for that matter, you really need to be sure that the company you’re buying from is legit. Check out our hints for safe shopping and above all remember 2 things:

If it looks too good to be true, it probably is and Use your instincts – If something just doesn’t feel right, walk away.
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Tags: iphone, Safe Shopping, scam awareness