Is this shop trustworthy?

Most advice on this subject is out of date. Watch for odd translations, it used to say, and for a logo that looks lifted off the web. That worked when setting up a fake shop was manual work. Today the copy is flawless, the design is tidy, and the shop looks better than most real ones. What still holds are the things that cost money or a real identity.

Can the shop say who it is? A trader selling to EU consumers must give a company name, a geographic address and a registration number - not a contact form, but details you can check. Look for the terms and the legal information. If all you find is a form, a Gmail address and a PO box, that is not sloppiness, it is the whole point: someone you cannot write to is someone you cannot hold responsible. A registration number takes two minutes to look up in the national company register. If it does not exist, or belongs to a company in an unrelated trade, you know enough.

How are you being asked to pay? This is the clearest single signal there is. A shop that accepts only bank transfer, cryptocurrency or a person-to-person payment app has one thing in common across all three: none of them has a chargeback procedure. Cards and the mainstream payment services do. If a normal method is offered and then swapped at the last screen for "pay us directly, it is quicker", stop there.

Does the price match a business that could exist? Branded trainers or a well-known console at half price, every size in stock, all year round, is not sharp buying. When in doubt, run the same search at a retailer you already know something about - Amazon, bol, Coolblue - and measure the gap. Ten or twenty per cent is a sale. Sixty per cent below everyone, permanently, is a business losing money, and nobody loses money on your behalf.

Trustmarks are useful, but only if you click them. A logo is an image and costs nothing to copy; the real thing opens a page at the issuing body with this shop's name on it. If clicking does nothing, or keeps you on the same site, the logo proves precisely nothing.

Two last cheap habits. Check how old the domain is - a shop claiming "15 years" in the footer on a domain registered last month is lying demonstrably. And read the returns terms before you order rather than after: a site promising seven days' return in one place and ninety in another was not written by anyone who intends to honour either.

If you have already been caught, tell your bank or payment provider as soon as you notice. Card payments have a chargeback procedure, and it has a deadline.