Online purchase scams surge, report says
BBB data suggest pandemic part of reason for increase
Online purchase scams are running rampant this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a new report from the Better Business Bureau (BBB) shows.
The number of online purchase scams reported to the BBB Scam Tracker has increased by 56 per cent from 2019 to 2020 according to the report.
With people desperate for masks, hand sanitizer, and other high-demand items, scammers are able to capitalize on peoples' COVID-19 anxieties by offering these coveted items at low prices, the report outlines.
In 2020, more than 80 per cent of consumers who reported an online purchase scam lost money, according to the BBB report, which was based on a mix of Canadian and American data.
The Ottawa police fraud unit
It can happen to anybody ... it's so rampant at this point in time it's almost hard not to fall for something.
says it receives between 100 and 150 fraud reports each week, though the unit couldn't say how many of those are online purchase frauds.
And Jessie St-Cyr, the Ottawa BBB's media spokesperson, says these numbers are just the tip of the iceberg.
“You need to take into consideration as well that only five per cent of people report fraud,” she says. “So that's not representative, it's a higher amount in reality.”
Using BBB Scam Tracker data, St-Cyr calculates that consumers in Ontario reported losing more than $72,000 to online purchase scams in 2020.
Mia Attfield, a 33-year-old Britannia resident, is one of those people whose losses weren't reported. In March, during the first wave of the pandemic when masks
were in short supply, Attfield purchased reusable masks on Amazon through a digital-only company.
Her mother, 63, had recently finished chemotherapy and needed the masks.
“I placed the order on April 3, and it said they were expected to arrive by the end of April,” says Attfield. The arrival date kept getting pushed back, but shipping delays were common at the beginning of the pandemic, so she trusted the company's claims of COVID-19-related delays and waited it out.
“By the middle of June I'd realized that these weren't coming,” says Attfield.
Attfield did not report the in
cident to the BBB or authorities because she thought it would be enough to contact Amazon directly and notify them of a potential scam. She also, on principle, wanted her money back, even though it wasn't a very costly purchase. However, Amazon said there was nothing it could do.
“Whether or not this was a true scam, I don't know,” says Attfield. “But I never got my money back, I never got the masks, and the company never contacted me again after I tried to contact them sometime in July.”
Attfield says she should have spent more time checking the company's reviews.
Even though these types of scams are increasingly common, St-Cyr says people may not report being defrauded because they are ashamed.
“It can happen to anybody, and really it's nothing to be embarrassed about,” says Attfield. “It's so rampant at this point in time it's almost hard not to fall for something.”
With the holidays just around the corner, St-Cyr expects the situation to worsen because COVID-19 is forcing more people to shop online than in previous years.
“It's probably going to create the perfect storm for people who are shopping really quickly or trying to buy items that are really popular or in high demand,” explains St-Cyr.
The best thing online shoppers can do, she says, is try to shop local.
“You have less chance to get defrauded if you buy from a local business and you're also helping out the small business owners.”
If you must order online, StCyr recommends doing as much research as possible, checking the company's reviews, using a reverse Google image search to see if the photos were stolen from another business, looking for inconsistencies in website names and information and, if you're still unsure, you can contact the BBB to help investigate.