Better Business Bureau, (BBB) 11262020

Cody and Erica spoke with Heather Clary, Director of Communications for the BBB serving Central and Eastern Kentucky about Holiday Shopping Advice

More resemble a low temperature c1 3 full wx speaker 1: welcome back.

Black friday, traditionally the single busiest shopping day of the year, is going to look a bit different this year.

Dedicated shoppers will be looking for deals mainly online.

Speaker 2: yeah, joining us with tips to keep in mind when hunting for bargains with a warning about online toy scams is heather clary, the director of communications for the bbb.

Welcome to the show, heather, we appreciate you joining us.

Heather clary: oh, good morning, thank you.

Speaker 2: so obviously black friday may look a little bit different this year to customers.

How different is it going to look for some folks?

Heather clary: well, because of the covid-19 pandemic, more people are choosing to just shop at home online and be safe and just dispense with going out entirely, not everyone, but some.

And actually, because of that, i think a lot of the retailers have begun advertising their black friday and offering those deals as early as... they do it earlier and earlier every year, so some people may have already been making their lists of the black friday deals they want to hit when they sit down with that computer and get to shopping.

Speaker 1: that is me, i'm one of them.

Obviously, this is an issue though, because when you're shopping online, there's some things you really need to be looking for and checking on a website, righer cof the things t the better businy're looking for that hard to gehat website,y don't get the item or thought itt find the website anymore.

Maybe thin ty bought it from.

So the first tor the business and see if that's lef thtomer service phone number that actngs that can help you determy be best to just shop with ret card, thae better for you prices are too le true, than.

Speaker 2: yeah, kind of that basue, right?

Yeah.

What are soare there any other red flags that sbvious things when they're going througer clary: well, for one ment is soh method, that can be a red flag because they don't want you to have a way to dispute anything that may happen.

If you don't see that it's a secure website before you give your personal information and your financial information, we advise people to look for that padlock at the top of the screen that indicates that the site you are on is secure, or you can look at the http line up there and there's an s after it, that will also indicate it is a secure website, it's safe to give your information.

Check out the business with the better business bureau, see if there is a report at bbb.org, if they've had customer issues and if so, did they resolve those?

A lot of those have already popped up online where people have had trouble, so that might be your first go-to site and see if there's going to be any problems that you can avoid.

Speaker 1: absolutely.

Just curious, too, are you seeing any scams already surfacing right now, or maybe ones that are returning?

Heather clary: every year, there's always that hard to get toy that the parents want to get.

Every year it's something, years ago it was hatchimals and stuff.

Well, now this year, it's some sort of a realistic animatronic toy dog that people are really interested in.

There's also some star wars toys that remain the hot item, the baby yoda type devices and galls and so forth and unfortunately, reports are already coming into bbb scam tracker around the country of sites that people tried to buy it on and what they got was just some cheap little replica or they didn't get anything at all.

So again, don't let your fervor to find that toy that your child really wants cloud your judgment when checking out who you are buying it from, because that can help you avoid a lot of the disappointment come christmas, speaker 2: heather, as always, lots of good information.

Those scammers are so sneaky.

Speaker 1: they really are, and they get better and better every year.

Heather, we'll post those tips on our website as well, wtvq.com.

Thanks for chatting with us today, we appreciate it.

Heather clary: sounds great.

Thank you all so much.

Happy holidays.