What you see on your screen isn’t always what you’ll end up getting delivered to your door. Online shopping continues to grow bigger and bigger, with e-commerce sales reaching a whopping 870 billion dollars in the United States in 2021. That’s a 14.2 percent increase compared to 2020 and a jaw-dropping 50.5 percent increase over 2019. However, with retail sales moving in the digital direction, there’s also more potential for getting scammed.
It’s vital that you do your research and check who you buy from when you’re shopping online. Otherwise, you’ll end up having spent your money on something that’s completely useless. Low quality? Try no quality instead. Our team here at Bored Panda has collected the most egregious examples of people having ordered something online only to receive something truly awful. So awful, in fact, that they couldn’t help but share the photos online.
Scroll down for the best of the worst. And if you’re feeling up for sharing, we’d love to hear if you’ve ever gotten tricked when ordering something off the internet, dear Pandas. Oh, and if you haven’t had your fill of laughter and quiet gasps of “oh no!”, then you should definitely check out our earlier lists about the top online shopping fails here and here.
We got in touch with Alan Castel, Ph.D., a UCLA psychology professor who studied scams for his book, ‘Better with Age: The Psychology of Successful Aging,’ and he shared with us how to tell if a deal looks fishy, how scams are always evolving but adhere to the same principles, and how scammers can target anyone. Read on to see what he told Bored Panda. And remember, if a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is!
