Knowing where to report online shopping fraud can help significantly reduce the number of shopping fraud cases online. Reporting online fraudulent schemes are highly encouraged by the government and businesses for a reason. Every time a victim of shopping fraud reports their experience an additional piece of crucial information about the scheme is automatically communicated to authorities. More information authorities have about a scam the faster they can identify any fraud patterns that can lead to the arrest of the scammer.
The active participation of online shopping fraud victims in reporting their experience boosts the ability of the government and businesses to stop online shopping fraud faster. To give you an idea where you can file a report against this type of malicious scheme, check out the list below;
Filing Online Shopping Fraud Report
- Action Fraud
Action Fraud is the primary fraud reporting centre in the UK. The site works closely with the NFIB or National Fraud Intelligence Bureau and the City of London Police. The primary role of this site is to receive fraud reports and forward them to NFIB. The NFIB carefully reviews your fraud complaint, cross-referencing them to other reports in order to find any useful pattern which can be handy in resolving your fraud case. The NFIB is also in charge of filtering, which fraud report has enough information or evidence that the police can work on. An update will be sent to you from NFIB, containing the status of your fraud report.
You may file a report with Action Fraud via its online reporting tool or you may speak directly to one of the Action Fraud advisors through 0300 123 2040. A national crime reference number will be provided to you, which you can use when following up the status of your fraud report.
- Local Police
Another way to file a report on online shopping fraud is to go directly to your local police. Remember to bring all the evidence and documents that can help back up your claim regarding the fraud that you wish to report. Secure a copy of all the information that you provided for your own reference. After you file a report with the local police shall provide you with a national crime reference number. This is the same number that you can get from Action Fraud. This number is utilized to index all the crime reports received by government authorities nationwide.
- Company
If an online shopping fraud was initiated using an auction site or any online shopping platform, then you may also consider reporting the incident directly to the involved company. Alerting a shopping site that their business is being utilized in a fraudulent scheme, help in speedily preventing fraud from continuously operating. The auction site may place the account of the suspected scammer under investigation, which immediately suspends the scammer’s right to access the auction site. During this period the website can conduct their own investigation and find out how the scammer is taking advantage of their website to defraud shoppers. In the meantime, the scammer is deprived of access to more victims. Once the company is done with their investigation the scammer will finally be permanently banned from the site.
These are just some of the places where you can go to file a complaint against online shopping fraud. Knowing how to access these options can save you time when filing a Big Scammers report and can even help you speed up the process of reporting online shopping fraud.
