Check the store, then choose how to pay
Check who you are buying from, and which way of paying leaves you best protected if it all goes wrong.
The basket is full and the page wants a card number. Two questions head off nearly everything that goes wrong from here.
Is this store who it says it is? And how am I paying, if it turns out not to be? The second one is the one people skip, and it is the one that decides whether anything can be done afterwards.
Key points
- The real name in an address sits immediately before the first single slash
- The padlock protects the line, not the store
- Pay by card and a company sits in the middle who can take the money back
- A discount for paying by bank transfer is a warning, not a bargain
What to remember
- Find the first single slash. Read backwards from it.
- No padlock is a reason to stop. A padlock is not a reason to continue.
- The question is never how much it cost. It is whether the money went through a card company that can reach back for it — so pay by card, and treat "can you wire it instead?" as the end of the conversation.
Try this
Look at the last thing you bought from a store you did not already know, and ask how you paid for it. If the answer is anything other than a card, that is the habit worth changing — not the shopping.
Practice: Check the store, then choose how to pay. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.