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Try these 5 ways to shop safely, smartly online

Kim Komando
Gannett News Service
November 22nd 2006

Each year, more people do their holiday shopping online. Nothing beats that convenience. But before you buy anything online, make sure you're staying safe - and getting the best deal.

A credit card is the safest way to pay for items online. With credit cards, you'll get security protection from your card's issuer. Visa, MasterCard and American Express all have a zero liability policy. If you notify the bank of unauthorized transactions, you pay nothing.

Also, with credit cards, you can assign password challenges for purchases. When you buy something, you're prompted for a password. This offers another layer of protection. MasterCard offers SecureCode and Visa offers Verified by Visa.

These programs only work at participating sites. To learn more, visit www.MasterCard.com and www.Visa.com.

Many credit card companies offer one-time-use numbers for purchases. Visit your card issuer's site to check availability. You may even be able to designate which online store can accept the card number.

As with credit cards, many debit cards have fraud protections. You can dispute charges to your account. But with a debit card, your money is tied up while you dispute charges.

Some online stores provide regular customers with promotional codes. You enter these when you check out. And they'll save you money.

With promo codes, you may get free shipping or a price reduction. Stores may have multiple codes, so pick the best one.

If you're not a regular customer, you can still find promo codes. Coupon Cabin (www.couponcabin.com), RetailMeNot (www.retailmenot.com), Current Codes (www.currentcodes.com) and Naughty Codes (www.naughtycodes.com) have them. Other sites also offer them.

Many sites aggregate prices from other sites. Enter a product name and sort through the results. You can sort the results by the lowest price or highest-rated store. Most allow you to enter your ZIP code so shipping is included.

PriceGrabber.com, Shopping.com, PriceSCAN.com and Froogle (froogle.google.com) all offer price-comparison searches.

When searching these sites, be specific. Otherwise, you could get hundreds of results.

So, if you're searching for a CompactFlash card, don't just enter "CompactFlash." A better search would be "CompactFlash 1 gigabyte."

When you buy online, there's the chance that your items won't arrive. Protect yourself by sticking with trusted merchants.

An established site such as Amazon.com is less likely to give you problems. But if you use a price-comparison site, smaller sites may have better prices. So you may opt to give them your business.

Before you do, though, do some research. Read reviews left by other shoppers. And look at their ratings. But don't take the ratings at face value. If one site has a lower rating than another, find out why. Maybe it is simply slow to ship items.

When you buy online, you must provide an e-mail address. The store will contact you with tracking information and order confirmations. You could also get spam.

So create a new e-mail address via a free provider. Hotmail (www.hotmail.com), Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) and Gmail (www.gmail.com) all offer free accounts. Use this account when registering and buying at online stores. When your purchases are complete, you won't need to worry about more e-mail from the merchant.

Kim Komando hosts the nation's largest talk radio show about computers and the Internet. To get the podcast or find the station nearest you, visit: www.komando.com/listen. To subscribe to Kim's free e-mail newsletters, sign up at: www.komando.com/newsletters. Contact her at gnstech@gns.gannett.com.

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