3 Ways You Could Get Scammed On Tonaton
The idea for buying from Tonaton or any other digital platform is for convenience, cost-effectiveness and timeliness sake.
Unfortunately, some people take advantage of these digital marketplaces to defraud other people of their hard-earned money.
In this article, we take you through three of such ways through which you could be defrauded on Tonaton.
1. Payment Before Delivery
Buying and selling move together. Once there is no buying, there is no selling.
So, while you prepare to buy your next product on Tonaton, make sure only to pay for products you have purchased and have in hand.
Scammers on Tonaton put up ads for products they’re supposedly selling. As a buyer, when you contact them, they’ll convince you about the quality of the product and encourage you to buy.
When you reach an agreement on the price, they’ll then ask you to send the money so they could send the products to you via the preferred means of delivery.
For those who select bus as their means of delivery, these scammers can go to the extent of going to the station with a friend who acts as a driver and speaks to convince you that your product has been received and should be sent to you.
They’ll then request of you to send the money for the product through mobile money.
While there are genuine people willing to send products by this means, chances are that you’re dealing with a criminal in such situations.
2. Delivery Fee Charged Upfront
Apart from Fedex, EMS and Ghana post, the other means of delivery take delivery fee from receivers and not senders.
As such, when purchasing from Tonaton, which primarily uses buses as the means of delivery, the seller doesn’t have to make payments for delivery.
The buyer is entitled to make payment upon receiving the package and confirming its accuracy.
In view of this, any seller who wants you to pay delivery fee even before your products are dispatched to you is likely to be a criminal.
For most scammers, they’d inform you that the VIP bus or any other bus service wants you to pay a certain amount for delivery and they do not have any amount on them so you should pay the fee through mobile money.
They’ll then try enticing you by telling you to deduct the delivery fee from the actual price when you finally receive the item.
For those interested in cars, you’re likely to hear two options when it comes to delivery of your cars.
You’ll be informed to either pay for the car to be rolled from its present destination to you or you send money for fuel so that car is driven to you.
Either of these options is fake and fraudulent. You’ll pay alright but never get to see your car.
Note: Scammers believe in gathering small small than losing big. A scammer believes that getting 100 cedis from 100 people is better than getting one person to pay 10,000 cedis. So unless you do not value your “small monies”, you can avail yourself to such thieves.
3. Fake Products Priced As Originals
We all know that for every product on the market now, there is a fake version.
Some of these scammers go all the way to get imitations of original products to sell online.
They then price the products at the exact cost of the original.
The unsuspecting buyer then goes in to buy the product, thinking he has bought the original product.
To prevent this, it is proffered that first-time buyers of certain items (Electronic gadgets mostly) get people who have experience in dealing with such items to check the items before they pay.
Conclusion: Though all the above points are ways through which one could be defrauded on Tonaton, it is not a perfect list of what happens. These are from experiences of others. You still hold the final decision when buying on digital stores. Again, this list does not apply to products sold directly by Tonaton (Products that have the BUy Now tag).
