Is This Online Store Legit? 7 Checks Before You Pay

You can tell whether an online store is legit before you pay by running seven quick checks: domain age, the company behind it, off-site reviews, prices, payment options, policies and the store's wider footprint. Found a store you've never heard of with a deal that looks great? Before you type in your card number, spend five minutes on these seven checks. None of them require special tools, and together they catch the vast majority of shady shops. You can also run the store through HasTrust's free shop checker to see key trust signals in one place.

1. Check how old the website is

Scam shops tend to be brand new. They pop up, take orders for a few weeks, then vanish and reappear under a new name. A legitimate store selling thousands of products usually has a history.

• Look up the domain's registration date with a WHOIS lookup (search "whois" plus the domain) or check the store on hastrust.com, which shows domain age alongside other signals.
• Be extra careful with sites registered in the last few months, especially if they claim to be an "established" brand or a well-known retailer's outlet.
• A young domain isn't automatically a scam — but it means every other check below matters more.

2. Find a real company behind the store

Legit businesses tell you who they are. Scroll to the footer and open the About, Contact and Terms pages.

• Look for a full company name, a physical street address and a working phone number — not just a web form or a Gmail address.
• Copy the address into a map app. Does it exist? Is it an office or warehouse, or a random house or empty lot?
• Copy a paragraph from the About page into a search engine. Scam sites often reuse the same template text across dozens of storefronts.
• Check that the company name in the Terms matches the store name. A fashion shop whose terms mention a totally different business is a classic template-shop giveaway.

3. Read reviews — off the site itself

Testimonials on the store's own pages can be written by anyone. What matters is what people say elsewhere.

• Search the store name plus words like "reviews", "scam" or "never arrived".
• Check independent review platforms and look at the negative reviews first: are complaints about slow shipping (annoying but normal) or about orders that never arrived and refunds that never came (a red flag)?
• Be suspicious of a perfect five-star profile with many short, vague reviews posted in a short burst — that pattern often means fake reviews.
• No reviews anywhere at all is itself a warning sign for a store claiming big sales volume.

4. Look at prices with a cold eye

The number one hook scammers use is a price that's simply too good. A €900 phone for €150, or an entire designer wardrobe at 80% off, is bait — not a bargain.

• Compare the price against two or three major retailers. Discounts far beyond anything mainstream sellers offer should stop you.
• Watch for fake urgency: countdown timers that reset, "only 2 left" on every product, permanent "closing down" sales.
• Reverse-image-search a few product photos. If the same images appear on many unrelated stores, you're likely looking at a dropshipping front or a fake shop. This is especially common in fashion, where scam sites steal brand photography wholesale.

5. Check the payment options at checkout

How a store asks to be paid tells you a lot about how easily you can get your money back.

• Safer: credit card and PayPal (goods-and-services), because both offer dispute and chargeback processes.
• Risky: bank transfer, cryptocurrency, gift cards, or payment apps meant for friends and family. These are nearly impossible to reverse — and a store that only accepts them is a serious red flag.
• Confirm the checkout page uses HTTPS (the padlock in the address bar). Note that the padlock only means the connection is encrypted — scammers use HTTPS too, so treat it as a minimum requirement, not proof of legitimacy.

6. Read the returns and shipping policies

Open the returns page before you buy, not after something goes wrong.

• A real policy names a return window, who pays return shipping, and a physical return address. Vague lines like "contact us for returns" are a warning.
• Check where returns actually go. Some shops look local but require you to ship returns overseas at your own cost, which can exceed the item's value.
• Look for realistic delivery estimates. "Ships in 24 hours" with no carrier named, or delivery windows of 4–8 weeks on everyday items, both deserve scrutiny.

7. Verify the store's wider footprint

Real businesses leave traces everywhere; fake ones exist only on their own website and in paid ads.

• Check their social media: a genuine account has a posting history and real customer interaction, not a page created last month with purchased followers and disabled comments.
• If the store claims to sell a known brand, check that brand's official website for an authorized retailer list.
• Well-known marketplaces have their own trade-offs too — you can read detailed community reviews of big platforms like Temu before ordering.
• If you found the shop through a message, ad or email rather than your own search, paste that message into the HasTrust scam checker — unsolicited links are how most fake shops find their victims.

Is this a legit store if I only have a checkout link?

You can't tell from the link itself — a checkout URL says nothing about whether the store behind it is trustworthy, so strip the address back to its bare domain (everything before the first "/") and run that through the seven checks above before you pay. Landing directly on a checkout page is common when you arrive from an ad, an email or a social post, and it's exactly the situation where a few minutes of checking pays off.

What the tracking codes in the URL mean

Long checkout links are often stuffed with parameters like affid, offer_id, click_id, transaction_id or source_id. These are affiliate and advertising tracking codes: they record which ad, promoter or campaign sent you, usually so someone earns a commission on your purchase.

Tracking codes are not proof of a scam — plenty of ordinary retailers use affiliate marketing. But they do tell you that you reached the store through a paid promotion rather than your own search, so treat the page with the same caution as any unsolicited link.

How to check the store behind the link

• Delete everything after the domain name and visit the homepage. If there is no working homepage behind the checkout — only a payment form — that is a serious warning sign.
• Run the bare domain through the checks above: domain age, company details, off-site reviews, prices, payment options, policies and wider footprint.
• Never enter card details on a page you reached only through a forwarded link, ad or email until the store passes those checks. If someone sent you the link, paste the message into the scam checker mentioned above.

What to read on the checkout page before paying

Read every line of the checkout page itself, including the small print near the pay button. Checkout pages reached through promotions sometimes bundle extras or ongoing charges that are easy to miss.

• Look for pre-ticked boxes that add products, insurance or "VIP" memberships to your order.
• Check whether the price is a one-off payment or a trial that turns into a recurring subscription, and how you would cancel it.
• Make sure the total, currency and shipping cost are shown clearly before you enter card details. A blank or changing amount is a reason to stop.
• Find the store name and contact details on the checkout page or in the linked terms. If you can't tell who is charging you, don't pay.

What to do if you already paid

Act fast. Contact your bank or card issuer and ask about a chargeback, or open a dispute in PayPal. Save screenshots of the store, your order confirmation and any messages. Report the site to your national consumer-protection agency and to the platform where you saw the ad. Then change your password if you created an account — especially if you reuse it elsewhere.

If you paid through a checkout link with a subscription or trial, also ask your card issuer how to block future charges from that merchant, and watch your statements for the following weeks.

No single check proves a store is safe, and no single miss proves it's a scam. But a shop that fails two or three of these seven almost never deserves your card number. When in doubt, walk away — the "deal" will not be worth the fight to get your money back.