December 22, 2021: Rather than condemning all sellers who get any complaints as scammers, I assign each seller a score that lies somewhere between “honest” and “criminal.” If a seller is just overwhelmed or a bit careless, that doesn’t make him a bad person. Still, you may want to think twice before dealing with an unreliable business.
A scammer is someone who steals your money by trickery or theft. A product is not a scam. Altho it’s common for scammers to hype mediocre products, I’ve also seen scams that involve good products sold in an evil way. So only one element of this scoring system is about the quality of the product.
I’m showing changes from the 2021 scoring criteria in blue.
Scored attributes
In the following list of website attributes, -1 means true (bad), +1 means false (good), and 0 means undetermined. These scores total to between -10 (deep mistrust) and +10 (highly trusted). I show a site’s total score by the position of the needle on the Trustworthy scale.
#1. Suspicious location address:
Scammers are shy about revealing their location. What triggers a negative score here:
- Mailbox
- Work-share or virtual office
- Located outside of the USA
Same address as a known scammer- Vacant lot, abandoned building
- Fake or invalid address
- The seller doesn’t disclose their address
#2. Ridiculous claims: Conspiracy theories and other extreme stuff that common sense tells you can’t be true — that, to be honest, you want to believe. In particular,
- It uses secret military, CIA, NASA, German technology, nanotechnology, quantum technology, etc.
- It’s wildly popular; “Lots of people are talking about it”
- It helps you break the law, cheat on your grades, etc.
- Giant corporations hate it and are trying to suppress it, make it illegal, keep it out of retail stores
- They’re suing, harassing, trying to silence the heroic scientist, inventor, doctor
- The product is going to revolutionize your whole life at hardly any cost or risk
#3. Onerous terms: Evil lurks in some Terms and Conditions documents. But if the T&C is too hard to read, that’s “Chicanery;” see below.
- Unreasonable obstacles to returning a defective or unsatisfactory product for a cash refund.
- Terms that diminish your legal rights, such as individual arbitration to resolve disputes.
#4. Ads, spam, robocalls: Aggressive advertising; sharing your data with other companies.
#5. Lying and deception:
- Any lie or deceptive omission. If they lie about something minor, they’ll probably lie about important stuff too. (I overlook ignorance here but laugh at it elsewhere.)
- Use of altered photos, such as forged magazine covers.
- Legal documents that contradict advertised terms.
More about Lying and Deception
#6. Chicanery:
- A website that’s designed to confuse you, make you decide in a hurry, or hide important information
- Legal documents that are hard to find, hard to read or too long
- A picture of a doctor
#7. Phony reviews:
- Testimonials. If I see more than three on-site testimonials, that’s suspicious. Social media identities are sometimes purchased or stolen and used to create this sort of fake content. I have no practical way to check them. So, more than three testimonials automatically costs the seller a point.
- If I find that any testimonial writer is a made-up person, that’s a point lost.
- A disclaimer that an offer is advertising automatically costs a point if the offer includes reviews.
- Reviews by shills; masquerading as impartial advice, these are just advertising. Any “review” with a prominent link to the seller’s web page is a shill because they get paid for their referrals.
#8. Crummy product: It’s typical for scammers to boast about a mediocre product’s quality. But keep in mind that a good product is no assurance that the offer is not a scam.
#9. Overpriced: I don’t insist on the cheapest price. But a price that’s 150% more than Amazon’s price gets a -1 from me.
#10. Bad service: The seller ignores emails and doesn’t answer their phone. So, their assurances of fast customer service and easy refunds are empty.
Unscored attribute: Unauthorized charges
Credit card theft is the most dangerous web scam. If I find complaints about unauthorized charges, then the seller’s score no longer matters, because I just don’t trust them. I show this result with a red stop-light labeled “CREDIT CARD RISK ALERT” on the Trustworthy meter. Unauthorized charges include:
- Charging a higher price than advertised
- Charging more than once for the same item
- Charging for items the customer didn’t order
- An unannounced subscription to an automatic refill (auto-ship) service
- A hidden monthly membership fee for a newsletter or “discount club”
Failure to use HTTPS (encrypted) protocol to protect your credit-card data from snoopers
Even if I don’t see complaints about unauthorized charges, I may consider the seller part of a company that has this problem. This can happen if:
- The seller’s address isn’t a mailbox (or it’s Robson Print And Ship), and
- It’s the same address as that of another seller associated with unauthorized charges
Web Scammer Jammer 