5 easy ways to identify genuine and fake products while shopping online

Festival season is near. In such a situation, most e-commerce companies including Amazon, Flipkart are offering great offers on the purchase of online products. But while shopping online one should be very careful, otherwise you may have to suffer heavy losses. Actually during the festival season, online fraudulent gangs become active. Simultaneously, fake products are also sold on a large scale by e-commerce companies. According to a survey conducted in the year 2018, more than one-third of fake products are being sold from the websites of many e-commerce companies. In such a situation, if you are going to shop online, then some things should be taken care of. This will prevent you from being a victim of fraud. 

Most of the online fraud is from fake website. Often people get huge discounts and deals on Flipkart or Amazon from WhatsApp or any other messaging app. A link is given with this offer, which can be fake. In this case, before shopping online with this link, check the website to be fake. It is clear that if the website is fake, then the product will definitely be fake. While purchasing such online product, check the link URL carefully. Explain that the real website will start from https and not from http. In such a situation, always shop online from the website starting from https. 

Match the product with the official website 

Each product has a model number. Look at this model number on the website of many e-commerce companies. Also, get details of the same model number from the official website of the product. If buying mobile online, look at the IMEI number written on the box and mix it with the official website of the brand before purchasing the product. Actually the e-commerce site sells many products through a third party. In such a situation, it becomes difficult to identify genuine and fake products.  

Check the product on the Smart Consumer App

Electronic and FMCG companies have started installing a special type of QR code and hologram to protect against counterfeit products, through which genuine fake can be identified. Apart from this, food regulators can also take help of FSSAI’s Smart Consumer App to identify fake products. It can be downloaded and used from the Google Play Store. In the app, you have to scan the QR code and enter the QR number. After this, the manufacturing details of the product will be obtained. In this way, the product can be identified as real and fake. 

Identify manufacturing and branding  

Counterfeit goods can be identified with the company’s logo and spelling. Companies selling counterfeit goods make exact logos. But this logo will be different from the brand logo. They also sell fake products by mis-spelling the brand name. In such a situation, when buying goods online, one should always look at the brand logo carefully. Also, the spelling of the product should also be investigated properly. Also, when purchasing clothes online, its fabric should be identified.

High discounted product can be fake 

While shopping online, one should always check whether the product you are purchasing has its physical address, email, phone number and contact details. If these things are not there, then the product will definitely be fake. Also, one should not get lured by huge discounts while shopping online. Explain that branded items, luxury products do not get 70-80 percent discount compared to MRP. In such a situation, if the MRP is getting more than 70 to 80 percent discount, then understand that the item is fake.