Be Cyber-Safe for Shopping Success

For Internet deal seekers, Cyber Monday is much anticipated because retailers offer their best online deals. This is the Monday following Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the busiest shopping day of the year.  By shopping online, you can avoid crowds and stress and still find the best bargains of the season. From the comfort of your own home, you can research product reviews and comparison shop the best deals 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can sit in your pajamas and buy anything with the click of a mouse.

But it’s important to be sure that this online shopping experience is a safe one, and we have some tips to share with you.

1. Secure your computer – Make sure that you’ve installed the latest patches for your operating system and the newest version of your browser. You also need a firewall, as well as anti-virus and anti-spyware programs with the latest updates.  You can clean your computer with free online software that detects spyware (such as Spyware Doctor) and install a free version of Zone Alarm. When placing orders or creating accounts on shopping web sites, be sure to use different passwords for each site that are different from your computer or email login. Choose something unique that doesn’t contain your address, birth date, phone number, or recognizable words. For example, you can make a random string of characters based on the first letter of each word in a sentence that is memorable to you but is difficult for others to guess. You can test the strength of your password here, and read more about password selection here.

2. Check out the sellers – Unless you choose the online site of a store you already know, you must be careful to ascertain whether the site is reputable  and reliable. Anyone can set up shop online under almost any name. Good companies will provide you with plenty of information and make it easy for you to find. Avoid any seller’s website that doesn’t have the following key elements:

• a posted privacy and returns policy
• customer service and contact information, including a phone number and physical street address
• secure online payments with credit cards

Look for these clues to spot signs of possible online fraud:

• Flashing ads or pop-ups on the web site
• Poor or overly simple web site design
• No contact/about information
• No physical address or phone number
• Site does not accept credit cards
• URL is redirected from another site, and doesn’t match the name on the seller’s page

3. Verify security and validity of the site - Many web sites use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology to encrypt the credit card information that you send over the Internet. These sites usually inform you they are using this technology, and you’ll see a closed padlock or unbroken key icon on the status bar at the bottom of your browser screen. Or, check to see if the web address on the page that asks for your credit card information begins with “https:” instead of “http:”; the “s” indicates that it’s a secure server. Avoid any site that doesn’t offer secure shopping, because savvy criminals can capture your personal and credit information that you enter onto a form on those sites.

Choose items with confidence when you order from sites like Amazon, Buy.com, or Yahoo, where performance of the participating sellers is monitored and feedback collected to determine the satisfaction level of customers. With imported electronics, especially cameras, you’ll want to find out if the company is an authorized reseller of the product you’re buying. Often items with surprisingly low prices are “gray market” and won’t have a valid US warranty from the manufacturer because they enter the country bypassing the licensed US importer.

If you’re not familiar with the name and reputation of a company, check out details or history of their web site at Whois or Godaddy, and look at their store ratings or reviews about them at ResellerRatings or PriceGrabber.  You can also validate a store you don’t know by checking its name in Hoovers, a site provided by Dunn & Bradstreet. Or you can google their website to find any bad press or complaints. If you don’t like what you read, shop somewhere else.

4. Choose the best payment type – Paying by credit card has the highest level of protection. It’s safer than paying by check, cash, or debit card, because, under federal law, your liability is limited to $50 if you have an unauthorized charge on your credit card. You can also dispute the charge if you don’t receive your items. Some credit card issuers grant you extended warranties or other advantages for purchases made with their cards. Others offer secure or “virtual” account numbers, randomly generated for each transaction that can’t be used for any other purchase. The Better Business Bureau suggests that you buy from US-based sellers, warning that if you buy from someone located in another country, you may not have the same rights or be able to enforce them as easily if the transaction goes wrong.

Consider dedicating a single credit card for online purchases so you can monitor the charges.  Another option is a disposable credit card, that works just like a gift card. You add a specified dollar amount to the card, and it’s good until it’s depleted. Then you can either add more to the same card, or purchase a new card. The bonus is that if the number from a disposable credit card is stolen, it’s anonymous, and criminals can’t gain access to anything more than the dollar amount that’s still available on the card.

5. Keep records – Once the transactions are complete, protect yourself by keeping dated records of your purchases. Print out the order form with your purchases and confirmation numbers in case there is a dispute later or the products are not delivered. Print out at least one copy of the Web page(s) describing the item you ordered as well as the page showing company name, postal address, phone number, and legal terms, including return policy. Keep it for your own records for at least the period covered by the return/warranty policy. If you receive a confirmation of your order by e-mail from the merchant, print that as well. Online purchases are protected under the Federal Mail/Telephone Order Merchandise Rule (unless the site says otherwise, merchandise should be delivered to you within 30 days.) Compare the charges with your credit card statement. You can view recent credit card transactions online to catch any problem even before your statement arrives.

The holidays bring out the spirit of giving, even in a tough economy. But it’s also the season for thieves and fraudsters.  Following these rules will help you have a safe and successful holiday shopping experience. And best of all, you’ll avoid road rage and fighting over parking spots.

Add comment November 7th, 2009

October Contest Results + Site Updates

Greetings everyone, hope you had a great October and we are back with our monthly wrap-up. It’s been a fun month, so sit back and relax, I’m going to fill you in on all the juicy details.

Here is a jam packed wrap-up:

• Monthly Contest Results
• Buxr is in the news
• Twittter + Buxr = Happy together
• It’s a virtual swap meet
• Guess who’s tracking what you buy… It’s not Santa!
• Yes, we’ve banned some users
• November is here!

Monthly Contest Results:

Some of the remaining winners may receive Buxr Swag:

Thanks again to all of our contributing members!

Refer a Friend Contest results:

No winners, and few participants in this month’s refer a friend contest. This is one contest that has failed to take off for Buxr. Do you guys have any ideas what we could do to get your participation? Remember, if you have no friends, we can’t help you.

Buxr is in the news!

A small but nice Buxr media blitz this month we made Time.com and The San Francisco Chronicle blogs!

We loved SF Gate’s summary of Buxr so much, we had to quote it here:

Buxr — Deal aggregation, crowdsourcing-style. Buxr members post the deals they find, which are then voted up or down based on their “hotness.” The members’ incentives for not submitting crap? Since member deals are voted on, there are daily and monthly awards for the best and worst deals, determined by a point system, and there’s money involved for the people who win best-deal prizes. It’s fascinating if you’re into online communities, doubly so if you’re into bargains too.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves! Thanks everyone!

Love Twitter… Why not follow us too?

If you love Twitter, you should definitely follow us. You’ll never miss another deal, because every single deal is automatically tweeted. If you have a Twitter app for your phone, you can check out our deal tweets right from it! If you need more info, read this blog post.

Swap clothes not germs!

Want to free up your closet and get some great gear for this winter? Check out this blog post about some cool new internet swapping sites. Trade everything from clothes to DVDs and save some money too!

Your buying habits are being watched!

Did you know credit companies are not only watching how much you spend, but also what you are buying? Check out this informative blog post on how your buying habits could affect your credit!

Yes, we’ve banned some users

As you know the daily and monthly contests are a big part of Buxr, and we are delighted that we’ve received such great participation. Unfortunately there are some people out there who want too much of a good thing. So in order to maintain the integrity of the contest we had to ban a few users this month. As always we do our best to police the site and keep things fair. If you have any comments or suggestions, please drop us a note.

It’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday in November!

Thanks again for all of your support, it’s going to be an exciting month with tons of blow-out Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. Make sure you stop by and check us out!

Have a great month,

The Buxr Team!

Add comment November 1st, 2009

Internet “Swap-portunity” Gives New Life to Old Items

Whether you call it “Swishing,” “free-cycling,” “ethical consumerism,” or “cashless exchange,” swapping online has become a growing Internet trend. This is a step beyond the traditional home-based fashion swap parties held years ago, where neighbors got together to swap instead of shop. And this new concept can reach a much broader area than a few blocks or part of a city. We all have items we no longer need, be that a wedding gown, a Halloween wig, or a timeshare on a private island. Finding a person who wants them has just become a lot easier through the Internet.

Such swap sites offer participants the 4 “Fs”:

1. Frugal – you can get new items at no cost simply by exchanging them for your unwanted ones
2. Eco-Friendly – swapping reduces both waste and resource consumption, as you get rid of unwanted items without discarding them and others continue to use them
3. Fun – much more exciting than simply shopping online, and you’ll make new friends in the process
4. Free – most sites charge no fees, all you pay is shipping or you can even localize your trades to meet in person

If you’re reluctant to try online swapping for fear of being cheated, you should first look around at the more popular sites and see how they operate. Most have some system of feedback, and some of them actually award usable credits for good trades. Members who do not behave honorably are removed, and rules governing the type and condition of the items that can be listed are enforced. I was amazed to find sites to exchange almost anything: clothing, books, music, DVDs, video games, and more. Some of them offer prepaid postage so members can take advantage of reduced shipping fees, paying only a flat rate for shipping.

One of the best sites I found is Swap Style, “saving the world one swap at a time.” Created by women for women, their members in Australia, Europe and the US have been swapping clothes, accessories, cosmetics and shoes since July 2004. There are now over 41,000 members. The interface is attractive and very easy to navigate. Members upload photos and descriptions of their items and, unlike auction sites, there’s no bidding or sniping.

At Rehash, over 9700 members trade clothes, books, and green living tips. While some sites may also allow buying and selling, this one is a very popular trade-only site. According to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle, interest in swap sites rose sharply as the economy declined, and the Rehash site experienced a spike from 4,000 to 7,000 users in December of 2008 that overloaded their server. Created by a San Francisco fashion designer, it continues to add 800-900 users per month.

There is public viewing of the clothing and accessory items listed at DigNSwap, but (like most of these sites) you have to get a free membership to “bid” (or offer to swap). The site is very simple looking, but well organized. You can search for specific items or browse by tag categories.

At Clothing Swap, members arrange exchanges online and then meet at scheduled swap events to complete their trades. These events often include a spa experience (wow! who wouldn’t like that?) or big warehouse events complete with DJs. There have been 170 of these events in a limited number of places like New York, California, Colorado, and Illinois. They categorize items clearly as new with tags, nearly new (worn only once or twice), or gently used (worn, but in good condition). Attendees must bring a minimum of 5 items to trade and unclaimed merchandise remaining after the swap events are donated to local charities.

Makeup Alley was launched in 1999 as a small community of beauty consumers, and has grown into one of the largest beauty social networks on the web. This site offers millions of reviews of thousands of cosmetics products, as well as message boards, shopping diaries and photos.

There are nearly 3000 members and over 2200 items listed at chanceXchange. On this site you can trade DVDs, games, CDs and books. Trading is limited by country to keep shipping costs down. Members swap for credits that they can spend on wanted items.

SwapTree has over 113,000 items listed, and provides a system of user ratings. A simple 3-step process, members create a “have” list, and a “want” list, and then swap books, music, movies, and games for free. More than 30,000 people in the California Bay Area alone are actively trading on this site. The Boston-based site reports that it has doubled its listings every three months since launching in July 2007, but hasn’t yet made a profit from its online advertising, which I imagine would be necessary to fund such free sites .

Bookins is the largest book-swapping site, boasting “more available books than the largest Barnes & Noble, the biggest selection and least effort” to swap easily. They offer totally free postage and a quality guarantee. People who are a bit hesitant to exchange clothing items might more freely exchange books without reservation. Both Bookins and Swaptree exchange only in the US.

A new site still in beta is BarterQuest, where members trade goods, services, and real estate locally and internationally. Links to other bartering sites can be found here.

More than 1.5 million items and services are listed for trade at U-Exchange, a swap site based in Toronto. Barters for everything from carpentry to cars to vacation homes are found on this site, which now has 14,000 members, a 70 percent increase over last year. This site includes members from 82 countries and listings for boats, motorcycles, and more. Members are given personal e-mail accounts to exchange messages about trades, and can post up to three photos for each listing. This site, like the others, is supported by website advertising.

Conclusion

Even if the economic climate improves, I think online swapping is here to stay. Once people have tried it, I can’t imagine that they would lose interest. Many of the sites started when the economy was strong, and built a base of users well before the downturn. Personally, I prefer the sites with a feedback system, so that I’m comfortable making trades. Several also have forums where you can read the postings before joining, to get a feel for the quality of the site. Most have evolved into a social networking experience, and use Twitter and Facebook to keep members informed of new listings. The sites listed here are only a few of the ones that offer you the option of swapping your unwanted trash for someone else’s treasure. It’s a whole new perspective on online trading, indeed!

Have we failed to mention your favorites? Feel free to tell us about them.

3 comments October 25th, 2009

Follow us on Twitter and win a Buxr Mousepad

Most of you have probably heard of Twitter, but how many of you actually use it? Well, at Buxr we just added a new Twitter feed that should be very useful to track all of the deals posted by the community.

Before I get to the details, Twitter is a micro-blogging service. What this basically means is that you get 140 characters to say whatever you want to anyone who follows you. A lot of Twitter pages are just streams of consciousness, but ours will be much more useful.

How to follow us

If you don’t yet have a Twitter account, signing-up is easy. You can do so here. Once you’ve signed-up, go to the Buxr Twitter feed and click “Follow.” Now every deal that is posted will show up on your twitter page with a link to the deal page on Buxr.

We are giving away 10 mousepads

We are giving away 10 cool Buxr mousepads to some of our followers. We will randomly pick the winners each week and will announce them via our twitter feed, one winner every Monday for the next 10 weeks. The sooner you follow us the more chances you have to win!

So what do you have to lose, it’s all free and a lot of fun. If you are really new to Twitter, and are wondering who else you can follow, check out a site called Wefollow.com. It compiles the most popular Twitter users, and you are sure to find something you like.

Show us some some love!

If you really want to show some love, please re-tweet this and spread the word

Add comment October 18th, 2009

How your buying habits could affect your credit

Using credit cards seems simple enough – you apply for them and they come in the mail. Easy. Now your off to shop… But wait! There’s more to it than just pulling out that plastic and buying the things you need. As you delight in making those purchases, your credit card company could be making decisions about you based on what you buy and where you purchase it.

Are You a Credit Risk?

Let’s examine that question. American Express, amongst other credit card companies accumulate data on everything you buy using their credit card – from the coffee you purchased at Starbucks this morning to the used tires you purchased last week. Credit Card companies aren’t concerned with what you bought, primarily they want to know what type of establishment the purchase was made at.

This data is used to help Credit Agencies determine whether you are a risk to them. The purchases you made for those second-hand pants, Casino betting, and the bag of cleaning supplies you got at the Dollar Store are possibly an indication to your Credit Card company that you may be in some type of financial distress and as a result, you may miss a payment in the near future. This in turn could cause your credit limit to be lowered and in the worst case scenario, canceled.

Other Factors determining Credit Worthiness

Besides your spending habits, there are other factors Credit Card companies are suspected of using to determine whether you are worthy enough to obtain or keep their plastic. Where you live, your nationality and how much you make annually could also affect your credit. American Express has already acknowledged it used information about where customers shopped to lower credit limits. After much criticism and outrage earlier this year, AmEx announced it would no longer engage in the practice.

Representatives from the four top credit card issuers — Bank Of America, CitiBank, Chase and Wells Fargo declined to discuss details of how they use purchasing data internally. Many consider this highly proprietary information. However, a spokeswoman from a banking industry trade group acknowledged that the practice is indeed common.

Why Credit Card companies track purchases

There are important reasons why credit card companies accumulate data.

Marketing. Credit Card issuers use previous purchase data to predict what additional products and services you might be interested in buying. So for example, that if you charge a lot of travel expenses, they could offer you discount hotel and airline offers.

Risk management. Most large companies practice some type of risk management and your credit card company is no different. Card holders that make a practice of going over their credit limits or suddenly display shopping habits that are out of their norm (like taking out large cash advances) against their limit could indicate to the card issuer that the consumer may soon default in payment or be on the verge of bankruptcy.

Fraud detection. This is an important safeguard to prevent you from being a victim of credit card fraud. Credit card companies look at patterns in the way you shop and anything that deviates strongly from this will be flagged as suspect by the card issuer. In many cases these types of purchases will result in a phone call from the card issuer to verify charges.

Law enforcement. Law enforcement agencies use the information collected by the credit card companies as well as merchants to enable them in solving cases such as missing persons and credit card fraud. Some might argue this is an invasion of privacy, but we think it is one of the better uses of credit reporting.

A Looking Glass Into Your Spending Habits

Each and every transaction you make is processed by all the credit card networks and is assigned a merchant category code (MCC for short), this is a 4-digit number that tells what type of business is providing a service or selling merchandise. You can find a complete list of codes here. These codes allow credit card companies to see what your spending your hard earned credit on.

Where privacy is an issue

Most consumers aren’t aware of credit data collection – whether they are shopping online or locally, and it’s uses at the hands of their card issuers. Personal privacy and credit management are two important issues that should be in everyone’s mind.

Cash is always the best protector in keeping your credit clean and your transactions private. However, if you’re like me, paying with cash is not always the most practical or a readily available means of payment especially while buying online. In this case, I would recommend using a pre-paid credit/debit card or gift cards as an alternative to using a credit card as these types of purchases are not recorded by your credit card company. Online payment services such as Paypal, Amazon Web Pay and Google Checkout also offer online shoppers a means to pay for their items without repercussion from the credit networks.

Using one or more of these alternative payment methods is something to seriously consider, especially when that purchase is one that Visa, MasterCard or American Express deems a risky transaction.

Fighting Back

The most recent credit card reform law signed by President Obama includes a provision that requires federal regulators to investigate whether credit card companies use information about where consumers shop and what they purchase as a basis for limiting credit for individuals.

Something is being done to protect you and I, and to stop the wayward practices of the big credit card issuers from continuing their abuses of the past. In the meantime, all consumers need to become more aware and do all they can to protect their own credit

Have you experienced a reduction in your credit based on past purchases or your location? Leave us a comment.

Add comment October 11th, 2009