Maximizing your hard earned dollars when shopping online for furniture can be risky business, but there are many ways to avoid overpaying or getting stuck with second rate. Besides your due diligence in comparison shopping and checking out several retailers before committing to buy, there are other factors to remember.
Be familiar with the retailer – all respectable online retailers will have an address and phone number.
Know what you’re buying – read the fine print to see if any red-flag words (e.g. “used” or “refurbished”) are used.
Know the cost – Comparison shop among similar products and factor in your budget needs (including shipping and handling) to make the most of your purchases.
Pay by credit card – Online transactions are typically protected by the Fair Credit Billing Act, which allows you to dispute charges under certain conditions.
Check out the terms of purchase
Keep paper records – Print out every purchase agreement and email sent to the retailer. Keep a record of all receipts and product descriptions of furniture you are buying. And of course keep a copy of the guarantee; you don’t want to be stuck with faulty merchandise, whether you buy online or in store.
Never email financial information – And be sure that the retailer has a secure site.
Verify the privacy policy – Online retailers collect all kinds of information about their customers. If the site you are dealing with doesn’t promise to protect your privacy, go elsewhere to shop for furniture.
"; ranContent[1] = "Buying furniture online has its risks and the onus is not just on the retailer to provide secure access, but also on the consumer to protect their own identity and network.
Online businesses employ many different methods to protect their clients against personal information being stolen or sold or having their transactions compromised. As furniture can be an expensive purchase you want to be doubly sure to protect your transaction.
Companies that want to accept clients’ personal information and credit card details over the web need to have a Secure Socket Layer or SSL certificate. They will also usually employ firewalls or a router that diverts web traffic, usually through a static IP address.
Verisign, one of the more prominent web security companies, uses 128-bit encryption technology in its SSL certificates to ensure that customer data is cloaked and invisible to hackers and other information pirates.
Consumers should look for proven software companies’ logos on their favorite retailers’ web sites, to prove that the company is taking measures to protect sensitive information.
Here are some of the better known web security software and hardware companies on the market:
Legitimate web retailers usually pour significant dollars into web security and protecting the interests of clients/members/shoppers. You should be sure that in the excitement of shopping for furniture you have not forgotten about your own security. Too many consumers connect to the internet using a cheap modem that came with their internet sign up kit. Further to that, a lot of them don’t update their antivirus security software and have no form of intrusion detection. The “always on” nature of most broadband connections is also a concern.
To protect yourself and your online business transactions, several steps need to be taken:The internet has virtually created (pun unintended) a new language. Understanding some of the terms you might come up against can help educate you about the world of online shopping.
This glossary is just a sampling of some popular terms and acronyms.Banner Ad – A banner ad is usually a rectangular advertisement placed on a Web site.
Certification Authority - Abbreviated as CA, a trusted third-party organization that issues digital certificates used to create digital signatures and public-private key pairs.
Digital Cash - A system that allows a person to pay for goods or services by transmitting a number from one computer to another.
e-Commerce – e-Commerce is business that is conducted over the Internet using any of the applications that rely on the Internet, like e-mail.
Live support - Live support is a Web service that allows businesses to communicate, or chat, in real time with visitors to their Web site.
Newsletter - Shortened form of newspaper and informational letter, usually sent via email to “opt-in” users.
PayPal - an online (Internet) banking service. It enables any individual with an e-mail address to securely and quickly send and receive payments online.
Shopping Cart - A shopping cart is a piece of software that acts as an online store's catalog and ordering process.
SSL - Short for Secure Sockets Layer, a protocol developed by Netscape for transmitting private documents over the Internet. Verisign is one company that has created a dynamic SSL.
"; ranContent[3] = "More and more, shoppers are turning to the web to buy furniture and are not afraid to describe their opinions on the overall “experience.” As online shopping has increased, consumer review sites such as epinions.com, consumersearch.com and consumerreview.com have become ever more popular. These sites are meant to be ‘unbiased’ portals where you can submit your rating on furniture, rate the store you used or rate the overall “experience.”
Epinions.com is quite possibly the biggest of these consumer review sites, where myriad products are reviewed alongside travel, restaurants, destinations and web shopping sites. Your choice of furniture might even make an Epinions “top 10” as rated by its users. You should consult these ratings before buying furniture as there is no better benchmark than an extensive review of your purchase. Epinions.com also offers shopping capability, as well as message boards and a member center for frequent users.
Like Epinions, consumersearch.com has extensive lists of product reviews, but unlike Epinions its reviews are generated by ‘professional’ sources (i.e. Consumer Reports). For instance, aggregate reviews of furniture are compiled and put into order from ‘best’ to ‘worst’.
Links to both Epinions and Consumersearch can be found on the pages of this catalog.
Consumerreview.com follows Epinions’ lead on reviews, allowing users to rate products. It just doesn’t do as good a job, with fewer options for reviewers to pick. However, it is a good place to cross-reference reviews from Epinions, as any good consumer should.
"; ranContent[4] = "Let’s face it, there are not that many products available online or anywhere else that have a 100 % guarantee. However when you buy furniture there are several things to consider that can safeguard you against shoddy merchandise.
The first thing to mull over is the retailer itself. Listen to your intuition as you look over the business you are dealing with and the furniture it is selling. If the retailer makes outrageous claims, makes spelling errors or looks amateurish, it probably is not worth dealing with.
The second thing to consider when guaranteeing your purchase of furniture is shopping on a secure site. A secure site will normally have an ‘s’ at the end of http in the URL, and it will also prominently display a seal from Thawte, Verizon or other respected guarantor.
If you choose a company that is not well known—or even if it is—starting out with an inexpensive purchase of furniture might be a way to make sure they are trustworthy and that you are getting quality.
Another way to guarantee quality—and avoid scams—is to shop local. That is, only shop with retailers with presence in the U.S. At least then, if the furniture you bought is not up to snuff there are state and federal laws to protect you. Of course, being familiar with a merchant’s return, cancellation and complaint-handling procedures also make good sense.
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