Since internet is nowadays full of people trying to cheat some money out of you and since you probably wouldn’t mind avoiding that, I made a list of simple ways to see if some online shop (in this case color contacts shop, but this goes for online stores in general) is a safe place to buy products.
1. Use a search engine (i.e. Google or Yahoo) to search using the online shop’s name as the keyword to find what other people think about it (possibly add words like “good” or “bad” to help).
2. Check the online shop’s website’s outlook to see if it looks appropriate (of course a scam site can have professional looking website too, but they don’t usually put so much effort to it).
3. Check its “Terms & Conditions” to see that they have ensured your safety and that you can get the money back for a broken product etc. etc.
4. Check what method they will use to transfer your money to them (since it’s most likely done using a credit card). Most proper online shops use PayPal, and it’s a trustworthy method.
5. Check if the online shop is owned by some company and check if it’s a trustworthy company.
6. Compare their prices to other online color contacts shops, if there is a big difference (much cheaper or much more expensive) between the prices you should think twice, because they often use the same products they sell (if a proper shop).
7. When getting ready to buy and giving your personal information, think if all the information you give is really needed (like social security number, because scammers could use it for bad stuff). Also check that it says that they won’t give your information to a third party.
With those methods you can pretty much tell the difference between a scam site and a safe site.
If you’re thinking of buying color contacts then you have to check my blog Buy Color Contacts Online because there is information that you will definitely need to know: what you should buy, where you should buy (safely and cheap), how to wear and various other information.