- 1
Find out who is actually selling to you
A legitimate shop names the company behind it — a legal name, a registered address, usually a company or VAT number — in the footer or the terms. If all you can find is a first name and a contact form, there is nobody to pursue when something goes wrong. Where a shop gives a registration number, look it up: most countries have a free public register.
- 2
Read how returns actually work
In the EU and the UK you have a statutory right to return most online purchases within 14 days without giving a reason. Elsewhere that right may not exist at all, and the shop's own policy is everything you get. Either way, read it before you buy: a shortened window, a restocking fee, or “final sale” on ordinary goods are all warnings.
- 3
Check how old the domain is
A shop with thousands of products on a domain registered six weeks ago is an unlikely combination. Fraudulent sites are built to be short-lived: launch, advertise hard for a few weeks, take the money, disappear before the complaints land. Any WHOIS lookup shows the registration date in seconds.
- 4
Look at how you are allowed to pay
This is the single most useful check on the list. A card payment or PayPal gives you a route to your money back. A bank transfer, a wire, gift cards or cryptocurrency give you none — once sent, it is gone. A shop that accepts only irreversible payment methods has chosen that on purpose.
- 5
Distrust a price that is too good
Branded goods at eighty percent off are not a bargain, they are bait. Compare against two or three shops you already know. On items with stable pricing, a gap of tens of percent means a counterfeit, a shill, or goods that never ship.
- 6
Reverse image search the product photos
Drop a product image into Google Lens or TinEye. Fake shops lift photography wholesale from real retailers and manufacturers. If the same picture appears on twenty unrelated sites — or on the brand's own site at four times the price — you have your answer.
- 7
Look for a contact with a human behind it
A phone number, an email address and a real postal address are the minimum. Try the number before sending a large amount. A contact form alone is easy to abandon the moment the money arrives.
- 8
Find out where the goods ship from and return to
A site that presents itself as local while shipping from another continent means long delivery, possible customs charges, and a return that costs more than the item. This is usually buried in the shipping or returns page — which is exactly why it is worth finding.
- 9
Read reviews anywhere but on the shop's own site
Testimonials on a seller's own pages were written by the seller. Search the shop's name on independent review platforms and in forums, and add the word “scam”. Complaints are more informative than praise: how a shop answered them tells you what to expect.
- 10
Know where to turn before you need to
If goods never arrive, contact your card issuer first: chargeback windows are limited, often 120 days, and they start counting immediately. Then report the shop — to your national consumer authority, and in the EU also through the European Consumer Centre if the trader is in another member state. Keep the order confirmation, the payment record and screenshots; fraudulent shops vanish, and so does the evidence.
One more thing
None of the ten points above works on its own. Even a shop that checks out can have a small slip in its terms, and a brand-new domain is not proof of fraud in itself. What counts is the whole picture: an operator you cannot identify, who wants the money up front and is putting you under pressure, is a far greater risk than a shop that merely lacks a phone number.
And that weighing up is exactly what ShopDetektiv does for you. It checks the places that matter, connects what it finds, and shows you precisely what does not add up about a given trader — with the exact quotation from their own pages.