L. Zagoritis: Let’s not get carried away by excesses during discount periods
The head of the Consumer Advocate, Lefteris Zagoritis, drew attention to those who want to proceed with purchases today, Black Friday, the following Cyber Monday and generally during discount periods.
Speaking to Athens 9.84 and Margarita Mytileneou, recommended that they conduct an investigation before placing a product in their cart and choosing the content of their purchases wisely, on the basis of their real needs and not under a regime of psychological impulse.
“We must not be seduced by exaggerations or by very low prices in a discount period. Of course, we will buy what is necessary, but only after checking that it is worth doing and if we are sure that in some cases the very low prices we see are not counterfeit products circulating. After all, there are many discount periods that we can take advantage of. We don’t need to panic and definitely buy something today.” he emphasized.
According to Mr. Zagoritis, often, distance shopping frauds are detected, something that was especially noticed during the lockdown period, when the physical stores where we saw what we were buying were closed and we tried through the websites to find products that we could not properly check.
In this context, he pointed out that the information, in addition to favorable prices, other guarantees should be sought when making a favorable and safe transaction from legal and valid online stores, such as if complete identification information such as the company name, registered office, postal address, VAT number or contact telephone numbers are posted on the store’s website.
“Caution is needed in online shopping. We need to find out if we are given alternative payment methods other than bank deposit. It is something that can hide dangers, especially if we are urgently asked to pay off what we buy, because we can find ourselves in a difficult situation. In the past, especially during the period 2020-2021, there were thousands of cases of consumers who pre-paid for products which they never received and, unfortunately, they were not even refunded the money they had given.” he added.
However, as he explained, the majority of consumers are now informed and the Consumer Advocate sent many such cases to the Prosecutor, resulting in a significant reduction in the number of fraudsters who resort to such methods.
In closing, he stated that both on the website of the Consumer Ombudsman (http://www.synigoroskatanaloti.gr/index.html) and on that of the Consumer Center (http://www.eccgreece.gr/el/european-consumer-center -greece/), for those buying products from EU countries, information, advice and instructions for safe shopping are provided.