Six Tips for surviving Cyber Monday

Stop Before You Shop:

STOP!!! Before you go shopping on this Cyber Monday, protect yourself.  There are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of web sites gearing up for your visit by lowering the prices, putting cookies in place (not the ones you leave for Santa later this year) and sprucing up the site for your and their pleasure.

Some sites are going to be Grinch’s and set you up for a horrible year end.  They will steal your credit and debit card information, abscond with your bank account numbers and on-line passwords.  Some will even crash your system after permanently deleting and overwriting your important files.

Protect your self with the latest virus protection and malware protection.  Buy it from a reputable manufacturer, directly from their site and with a URL you type in yourself, not a link for them from an advertisement.

Install it and scan your system.  Then make sure your operating system has all the latest patches.

Next, get the latest patches for all the browsers on your system.  Even though you may only use one browser, update all the web browsers that are on your system as some nasty sites out there may try to take advantage of the vulnerabilities by launching them in the background.  Your previously purchased protection should protect your, but better be safe anyway.

Now you are ready to go forth and conquer.

Pricing:

Some retailers, both on the web and at their brick and mortar locations will often match or beat prices.  If you want to try this option to squeeze out the last cent you are a braver person than I am, but since many people will be trying to do this, I will tell you how to do it.

Read the pricing rules before buying everything and then read them again.  Read all that fine print.

Watch out for the time restrictions.  Most Cyber Monday deals have certain time restrictions.  Pay attention to the time zones as you don’t want to buy the 42” monitor before midnight and find out it’s before 3 am at the cyber store.

Most pricing deals state ‘exact model” in their price matching.  Often big-box stores have a product model that is only for their chain

I once bought an expensive DVD changer at a store and then found the same exact thing at another store at a cheaper price.  They looked identical and were even made by the same manufacturer.

The model number was just one letter off.  Investigating, I found someone who worked at the manufacturer and had them look up the model numbers and found out they were the exact same device.

The one I bought was a model number for most resellers.  The less expensive one was made for a particular store and the only difference was the model sticker on the back.

I didn’t get the lower price.

Email Advertisements – Good and Bad

Your email inbox is probably filling up with advertisements from all your favorite stores trying to cheer you up and enticing you into spending lots of money at their sites.  Be very careful in clicking on any of the links in the emails.

I have received three different advertisements for a well-known store that I buy from and yes, I let them send my lots of email.  I write about some of the gadgets they sell and sometimes I will wait to buy something when I see a great price.

Two of these email advertisements had links pointing to what appeared to be the store’s web site: the logos were identical and everything looked fine.  Luckily my malware warned me that trojans were being loaded on my computer by two of those sites.

You may also receive lots of email offering $40 iPad 2 tablets and $60 Dell computers that have specifications of high-end workstations.  There is a special key on your computer or a special button on your email client that allows you to deal with these wonderful emails.

It is called DELETE.  Make good use of this function and it will even build up your finger muscles.

Other emails will offer you money from long-lost relatives.  I will help you sort out these emails.  Print out the email and enclose it in an overnight letter or shipping box with the exact amount of money they ask for.  Address it to Fred at Broadband Expert.  I guarantee that you will learn from this.

Beware of Unbelievably Low Prices

Advertisements of $20 or even free iPads litter the cyberspace, enticing lots of people.  Yes, you might be able to snag one for that price, but you will probably spend $2,000 or more of you’re your time trying to do that.

Other low-priced sites will make you “qualify” to be able to receive preferential pricing, like applying for and getting a VISA or MC credit card from a bank you have never heard from as well as order a “free” trial of wrinkle remover.

You will spend a lot of time and money reversing the credit card charges and canceling the wrinkle remover.  You would have been wise just to pay full price for the tablet.

Some of the low-priced sites will charge your credit or debit card and then disappear before you become too impatient in waiting for the delivery that never comes.

Make sure anything you order is from a reputable, well-known company.  Also, be sure to check them out with the Better Business Bureau – ask about complaints against them.  If there are a lot, steer clear of them.

Around the corner from me there is a nationally-known chain that offered 40” LCD flatscreen TV’s for $199 and people camped out there overnight to get those flatscreens.  The little secret was that there were only ten of these offered for sale and they were placed in various locations around the store. The second secret is that those TVs were bought for around $196 by the store.

You can see a similar tactic on Cyber Monday.  The first 20 people get a [put your sale item description here]!  Sale starts at 11:57, and ends at 12:00.  Go for it if you feel lucky and remember to check the timezone.

Purchase from well-known web sites only:

I cannot stress this too often.  Deal with companies that are well-known.  Anyone with $60 can put up a store overnight and start taking orders.  There are sites that will exist for a couple of weeks, purchased by untraceable pre-paid credit cards.  They will be all too happy to take your money.

If you are not sure about a company, don’t deal with them until you can thoroughly check them.  The BBB (Better Business Bureau can help if they list a lot of complaints.  If they do not have complaints about a company, that only means no one complained about them yet.

Stay clear of sites that are clearly offering counterfeit stuff.  Yes, that $2,000 purse sure looks like a great deal at $200.  Of course, it is not the real thing.

In fact, the DOJ recently shut down 130 web sites offering counterfeit goods a little while ago.  I might remind you that receiving counterfeit goods is a crime.  A visit from the FBI or ICE is usually not a social call.

Remember: if someone wants to sell you an iPad for really low cost, read this first!

Use only safe payment methods:

The safest payment method is with a credit card on a secure payment site.  You can tell a payment site is secure by looking at the URL.  If it starts with “https://” the payment site is secure and encrypted.  While some browsers also show a padlock in a status bar to show a secure site, I would only trust the “https://” URL to be sure.

I highly recommend using a credit card rather than a debit or debit/credit combo card.  Credit cards offer consumer protections that debit cards do not.

On top of that, many credit cards offer additional protections like complete replacement if whatever you purchased is destroyed.  Credit cards also give you leverage in dispute resolution.  Contact your various credit card companies to find out what protection they offer.

PayPal and like payment services are generally secure and safe.  I would still use the credit card, as PayPal may not provide as much clout in dealing with problem purchases.

Now, Shop ‘till you drop, or your finger gets tired from clicking on checkout buttons.