Shopping fraud to take notice this shopping season

Following Singapore’s latest consumer watchdog which flagged Courts and Prism+ for misleading online shopping practices, the concern of eCommerce reliability is once again brought to attention locally.

Courts was caught auto‑adding items to customers’ carts, while Prism+ used fake countdown timers and “low stock” alerts to pressure buyers. Apart from expanding on these misleading tactics, the article will identify other tactics alongside methods that consumers can use to protect themselves from fraud.

Low stock alert

Leveraging on customer’s desire to get a discount, PRISM+ have come under fire for unfair trade practice to pressure customers into hasty purchases – through timers which are not indicative of actual inventory.

To combat this: try using an AI search engine to search for the price and alternative sites to purchase the same product.

Auto-added items

A customer who purchased an iPad might also have a vacuum added to their cart unknowingly, leading to extra cost. Additionally, such items would not be reflected in the cart until the time of payment.

Likely under the pressure to get timed discounts, or based on the credibility of a major platform like Courts, many customers have fallen for this tactic. Whilst this tactic have since been removed from its online sites, customers should continue to remain vigilant with other shopping platforms.

Inflated discounts

PRISM+ was also found to show inflated discount on their products: CCS found that the maximum discount advertised was unattainable for the products which are supposed to get a discount percentage.

While many might find it too time-consuming to calculate the discount percentage, customers could turn to AI as an option to find the cheapest deal from alternative retailers for the same product. AI-enabled browsers could make this job easier.

CASE support

Being often brought up as a method for conflict resolution between customer and merchant, customers can file complaints with CASE, where the organisation can negotiate with the businesses on your behalf.

The benefits can be broadly split into non-member and member, with the latter requiring lower fees for ACS and mediation, and priority handling. While membership is optional, the membership can come in highly useful if members foresee themselves dealing with multiple disputes.

Safety Nets

Ideally, using PalPal as a payment method would offer the most protection – Buyer Protection would cover items not received or items that differ greatly from description, up to 180 days.

Credit cards would offer an additional protection over debit cards – allowing users to dispute for a chargeback for liable payments. The chargeback feature could also play a crucial role for phishing attempts, as banks generally give credit card disputes higher priority than debit card disputes.