On online shopping and unknown callers

Ever since I started my online shop, Pink Fortune, I get to receive text messages from unknown numbers of prospective buyers. Naturally, I gladly entertained all their inquiries for me to have a successful transaction with them. Online shopping in the Philippines is still at an early stage because a lot of people are still hesitant to use their credit cards online and are still not comfortable of having to wait for their items to be delivered via courier. Albeit the comfort online shopping brings, a lot of consumers prefer to shop in the malls or have them delivered via COD. Some marketing strategies can be sometimes annoying too like calling you and offering you to buy their items. A friend tried to report telemarketers once to PLDT but to no avail. Another reason that hinders online shopping in the Philippines to soar is due to scammers. I need not elaborate on those sellers in Multiply who turned out to be scammers because it’s been happening for years now. As a seller, I have my fair share of scammers online. Yes, even online sellers can be scammed and harrassed.

My contact numbers are posted at the front page of my online shop so that buyers can inquire through text. It has its downside, I am more prone to prank callers. Some buyers could get so demanding that they even call in the middle of the night, some demands for a meet-up which I don’t do for security reasons. It could get pretty scary, how I wish I could run a background check that easy in Numberinvestigator.com to know the identity of the unknown caller. Sadly, it still not available in the Philippines but I hope authorities can come up with a similar one. I think it’s also one way for people to be vigilant and not rely in the police for their safety, they can just run a reverse phone lookup and they’ll know who are they talking to.