BBB warns of online shopping, puppy scams
When Christmas and the holiday season comes around, various types of online scammers do their utmost to part consumers from their money.
Fraudsters can make almost anything into an online scam, Better Business Bureau reports: Puppies. Beauty products. “Men’s health” items like erectile-dysfunction drugs.
BBB regional offices recently issued a series of warnings about the problem. BBB’s Springfield director, Stephanie Garland, said that the nonprofit watchdog group sees online shopping scams as misfortunes that flare up around the holidays but continue year-round.
Since January 2021, BBB performed three distinct consumer surveys to learn more about U.S. shoppers and their behavior online, Garland said. What the nonprofit watchdog group found is that most consumers would rather shop local, but that the majority of them are also shopping online due to convenience factors, in part due to pandemic-era conditions but especially because they want to save precious minutes better spent with loved ones.
In keeping with that consumer expectation, one BBB poll reported that 80 percent of consumers said it’s important for retailers and other businesses to have websites.
BBB cites these new scammer tactics
But websites, and social media platforms that link to them, are also the paths that fraudsters use to take advantage of people. And they modify their tactics constantly, BBB says.
In the past 12 months, scammers have moved beyond their traditional bailiwick hawking bogus “free trial offers” for products like moisturizers or generic Viagra, BBB Scam Tracker data show.
“Free trial offers” that turn into sticker-shock headaches have evolved to include CBD products and other personal-care items. Similarly, online-shopping scams in general are increasingly wide-ranging, BBB said.
Garland, with the BBB Springfield office, told the News-Leader that over 2021, “we’ve seen scammers impersonate a plethora of counterfeit goods including fake water park pools, fake diamond rings, fake ‘Predator’ helmets, fake Halloween decorations… What the Scam Tracker data show us is that scammers are aware of consumers’ changing shopping habits, and they are unfortunately adapting with the times.”
Fake “Predator” helmets? Yes. BBB recorded a 2021 scam report involving a Shell Knob man who lost $39 in a quest to buy a collectible helmet styled after the popular sci-fi movie franchise.
Springfield woman’s puppy problems started with Facebook
But not every scam is so quirky. In particular, online puppy scammers strike before and after Christmas and other year-end festivities, BBB found. Garland said they’ve tracked recent reports of pet scams and other online-purchase problems from Springfield and a slew of nearby Ozarks towns: Bolivar, Branson, Camdenton, Comet, Laurie, Kissee Mills, Leawood, Lebanon, Marshfield, Morrisville, Mountain Grove, Nixa, Republic, Seymour and Shell Knob.
These varying fake product scams are a global nuisance: BBB found that big increases in pet scam complaints were logged in the United Kingdom and Australia over the past two years. Many of the pet scams originate in the African republic of Cameroon; many other online-purchase scams are linked to China, enabled by “lax social commerce shopping platforms.”
Tammy Coryell is a typical example of someone victimized by pet scammers in Missouri, Garland said.
Coryell, who lives in Springfield, told the News-Leader that in January of this year, she was looking for a golden retriever puppy.
“I just really wanted a golden because I wanted a dog that just had a really sweet nature, that would be good with my grandkids,” she said in an interview shortly before Christmas.
Coryell said she has copious grandkids: four younger than 5 years, with another one on the way in February.
So, she took to Facebook and searched for golden retrievers around the Springfield area. Her intentions were mindful, she said: “I was trying to, you know, not end up with a puppy mill dog… I didn’t want to buy from a puppy mill.”
Coryell found a site that referenced Missouri golden retrievers, and she soon began private-messaging someone who claimed to be a dog-breeder based in Lebanon. In hindsight, she said, there were red flags aplenty. “I realized, reading back through (the message thread), that the person didn’t tell me where they were located until they asked me where I was located. And when I said ‘Springfield,’ then they came back with, ‘oh great, but we’re in Lebanon.'”
As communication with the “breeder” went on, Coryell said the private messages he sent over Facebook showed faulty grammar and seemed to become less coherent. She suspected the person wasn’t a native English-language speaker.
The self-styled Lebanon dog breeder demanded a $500 deposit, quoting a full price for a golden retriever puppy at $800. Later, Coryell learned that the going rate for a purebred golden retriever puppy is at least $1,000 and often $1,200 or more. She also says that a bit of online sleuthing indicated the so-called breeder may have been a scammer based in Utah.
“I was supposed to get the dog the very next day,” Coryell said, but the “breeder” didn’t show at the appointed time, instead offering an excuse story that involved a “COVID hold,” a stop at the local ASPCA office and a demand for $1,000 cash. When Coryell questioned the “breeder” and offered to drive to the ASPCA office to meet him, the story shifted: “Finally, he says, I’m in Amarillo, Texas…. I went to Texas for the holidays, and I’m on my way back.”
The situation went from full of red flags to total fiasco pretty quickly, Coryell acknowledged, and she realized she was being victimized because the scenario was so absurd: “Who brings a new puppy to Texas on vacation?”
Coryell had paid the $500 deposit through her Venmo app, but learned Venmo and the bank hosting her account linked to the Venmo wouldn’t be able to help her recover her money.
Later, she bought a golden retriever through a reputable dog breeder based in West Plains. She vetted the breeder in part with a simple FaceTime call and advises others to check breeders’ references and to consider checking with veterinarians for breeder suggestions.
Now, Coryell says, she doesn’t want anyone else to experience a similar mishap. Losing out on $500 wasn’t financially devastating for her, she said, but she knows it could be disastrous for many families.
Garland, the BBB regional director, said that people are looking for new pets online in part because so many workers are doing their jobs from home, or with a hybrid home-office work schedule.
“At the current pace, pet scams reported to BBB will be nearly five times as many as in 2017,” Garland said.
Fake puppies? How to avoid online-shopping fraudsters
BBB’s recommendations avoiding pet scams and online-shopping fraud are common-sense:
- Use BBB.org to check a business’ rating and accreditation status, along with scamadviser.com, a site that logs how long other websites have been operating. Older sites are better. Scammers often regularly re-create scam websites under new brands, BBB reports.
- Check contact information, including a company’s physical address. Use caution if the site does not have a U.S. or Canadian phone number or uses a Gmail or Yahoo email for business.
- Search online for the vendor’s name plus the word “scam,” which may alert you to red flags about a company.
- Scrutinize online reviews about a company. Keep in mind that some scammers post fake positive reviews about their own sites. Look at bad reviews first; they’re more likely to be real.
- Pay by credit card or a third-party payment service like PayPal.
- If buying pets, consider adopting a pet from a shelter or working with a rescue organization.
- See the pet in person before paying any money, or consider a video call with the seller. Scammers are unlikely to comply with either request.
- Research market prices for the purebred dog you’re seeking. Deeply discounted dog offers are likely to be fraudulent.
- Using a service like Google Images, perform a reverse-image search of puppy photos offered by the seller. Scammers frequently steal photos from other websites. The dog they’re “selling” may not exist.
How to report a suspected scam
To report fraud, consider the following steps:
Reach News-Leader reporter Gregory Holman by emailing [email protected]. Please consider subscribing to support vital local journalism.
