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Shopping Scams Reports - Scams in Stores and Online

Shopping Scams Reports - Scams in Stores and Online

Online shopping scams are as frequent as legitimate online stores. Below are direct, unedited reports from consumers of their own experiences. If you have follow-up to either substantiate or rebut an experience below or your own story to add, please tell us about it!   State Attorney General's offices received complaints involving purchase made through internet, telephone or mail, about late deliveries or products never delivered. Other scams involve the purchases of appliances, furniture and other items in which there have been warranty problems, defective products that either did not work as advertised or were never delivered. Consumers also report products not always ringing up at price advertised when they checked out at the register. Other retail related complaints included issues with rebates, coupons, and gift cards.

The internet isn't the only place where you can be scammed.  Brick-and-mortar stores, shopping malls, the grocery store, Wal-Mart, and other shopping areas are also places where criminals operate their scams.

When you are out in public, shopping in a store:

  • Always keep you purse or wallet in your hand or securely inside a tight pocket.  Pick-pockets like to operate in close quarters and crowded locations, and can remove your wallet from even an inside pocket without you realizing.
  • Some thieves will fill a shopping cart with similar items, so when you aren't looking they can switch carts.  If you left your purse or wallet in the cart, it can be minutes before your realize the switch, and by then, the criminal is gone.