7 tricks to avoid falling for fake offers on Black Friday

7 tricks to avoid falling for fake offers on Black Friday 1

With just a few days before Black Friday hits stores, wallets across the country are getting ready to run out of cash. Despite the fact that most online stores lower the price of their products in relation to the original starting price, it is not the first time that cases of false offers have been detected with prices even higher than the recommended sale price . For this reason, it is essential to take a series of precautions to avoid falling into this type of fraud and scams.

Compare the price of the product in other stores

"50% discount", "Discount of 45 euros", "Half price", "145 euros 100 euros" ... The practices of stores to attract the attention of visitors are as diverse as they are original. But is it really an offer?

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To check it, just go to a similar store to know the real price of the product or enter its name in Google Shopping to compare it with a multitude of online stores. In the latter, Google will show us a list of stores that offer the same product : we can change your order at will based on price. The tool will also show us if the price has changed in the different stores it links.

Search the product by image on Google or through AliCompare

Some stores based on the famous Dropshipping model, a model that we talked about previously in the article that we have just linked, inflate the price of their products to obtain a profit that can sometimes be doubled. To detect this type of product, we can use Google image search or third-party extensions .

When it comes to extensions, AliCompare's AliExpress Image Search is the best extension to discover similar products within AliExpress. We will only have to download the image of the product in question and upload it through the extension. Next we will be shown a list with all the same or similar products that are sold directly in the Chinese giant .

  • Download AliExpress Image Finder for Google Chrome

Are you going to buy on Amazon? Use CamelCamelCamel

If we are going to buy on Amazon and we want to make sure that the offer is real, we can turn to CamelCamelCamel, a powerful extension and website that shows us a history with the price of the product since its publication on Amazon . Simply enter the link of the product in question to know all the information about its price.

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If we use the browser extension, CamelCamelCamel will show us a graph within the Amazon page with the same values ​​as the web page . The tool also shows us the maximum and minimum value and the starting price of the product to help us verify the price progression throughout its history.

  • Download The Camelizer for Google Chrome

Download AliTools if you are going to buy on AliExpress

AliExpress is another of the stores that will join Black Friday on November 29. Like Amazon, there are a multitude of third-party extensions and services that allow us to analyze a certain product in terms of price and characteristics.

Among all the existing extensions, AliTools is the most complete . In addition to showing us the information directly on the product page, AliTools has a price history that differentiates the values ​​depending on the desktop version of AliExpress and the mobile application . Likewise, the extension will notify us if a price change is experienced in those products that we have previously stored.

  • Download AliTools for Google Chrome

Start searching early and turn to Excel to jot down prices

A very widespread practice among some stores is based precisely on inflating the prices of their products days before Black Friday to highlight the different offers based on the established price. Detecting this type of fraud on Amazon or AliExpress is as easy as using the extensions mentioned above. But how do we proceed if the store is less popular?

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The only measure we can carry out is based on manually entering the price of the products we want to buy in advance . In this case, it is recommended to use Microsoft Excel or a table program to create a table with the following fields:

  • Article
  • Article link
  • Original price
  • Black Friday price

With this simple method we can check if the offers are real or are merely a scam.

Check tax information and web security

During Black Friday, Cyber ​​Monday and 11.11, thousands of stores emerge that take advantage of the increase in consumption to obtain profit with it. A very small percentage of these stores get traffic by busting the market with ridiculous prices, fake offers and a store that lacks legal guarantees .

To verify that, indeed, we are facing a secure - or insecure - website, it is best to review the information related to the tax data of the company in question . The normal thing is that this type of information can be found in the footer  of the web. In the event that data such as the company's CIF, the NIF of the person in charge or the fiscal address of the store are not specified, it is most likely that it is a false company, as we have already seen with Sharazon.

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To check that the page has the latest security methods we can use the browser's address bar: if this has a padlock, the information sent to the server will remain encrypted against attackers.

Nobody gives hard four pesetas

With the arrival of Black Friday, it is very likely that most online stores decide to invest in advertising through Instagram and Facebook. It is well known by all that these applications often link to websites based on the aforementioned Dropshipping model or to stores with products of dubious quality or fake. The recent case of the fake AirPods Pro is good proof of this.

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AirPods for 50 euros? Xiaomi Mi Band 3 for 10? Most likely, they are fake offers or products that differ from the promised characteristics. Remember: nobody gives hard to four pesetas.