If you love to shop online, especially on Instagram, then you must know the ways to identify fake Instagram vendors.
Nowadays, we do most of our shopping online, and Instagram is one of the biggest platforms to showcase our goods and for buyers and sellers to connect directly. Even people with shops now have pages on Instagram where they post pictures of their items and thereby increase their sales and customers.
It becomes a major problem when the platform that is meant to ease the stress of having to go to shops or stores is now the same platform that fake people use to scam people out of their money.
If you have been a victim of a scam, you’ll know how hurtful it is to be scammed of your belongings or money. With the increasing number of Instagram vendors nowadays, it becomes harder to tell the real ones from the fake ones.
If you find it hard to tell the difference between a real vendor and a fake one, this post is dedicated to you as I’ll be sharing with you useful tips on how to identify fake Instagram vendors.
When I say ways to identify fake Instagram vendors, I’m not only talking about the ones that block you after you pay for your items and don’t deliver. I’m also talking about the ones that give you the “what I ordered versus what I got” items, and most of them are unapologetic about it or have a “no return policy.”
These tips could also be useful for you in identifying fake job Instagram accounts, as kidnapping through fake job interviews is getting more rampant these days.
6 ways to identify fake instagram vendors
Locked comment section
One of the first ways to identify fake instagram vendors is when they have a locked comment section. An Instagram vendor with a locked comment section is a major red flag. Personally, I don’t see why a vendor should lock their comment section; it’s all shady.
I remember how I almost fell victim to possible kidnapping via the job offer method. I applied for this job on instagram and I guess the number of their followers and the payment of the job attracted me so much that I didn’t stop to confirm the trueness of this page. I started getting suspicious when I got sent the address of the place I was supposed to have the interview. It seemed shady. This caused me to confirm this account on nairaland and I found shady stories about them. In the midst of confirming the trueness of this account, I decided to check through their comment section so I could see other people’s comments, and I realised the comment section was locked.
Vendors that lock their comment sections are mostly trying to avoid previous customers’ complaints or previous scam victims from warning people.
Number of usernames
Noting the number of times that a vendor has changed their username is one of the ways to identify fake Instagram vendors.
Oftentimes, when an Instagram vendor or user successfully scams a number of people, they change their username to another, and this is after they have blocked the accounts of the people they have scammed.
To check the number of times a vendor has changed their username on Instagram, follow these steps:
Go to their Instagram profile.
Click on the 3 dots at the top right corner of their profile.
Select the “about this account” option.
The number of times and when this vendor has changed their username will be displayed in the ‘former usernames’ option.
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Incomplete content or the majority of content is provided on the same day
If their page is empty, has scanty posts, or all their posts are made on the same day, you have every right to be suspicious of them. This is also one of the ways to identify fake instagram vendors.
I once got a text from an account that gave me Tinder swindler vibes. I did not understand why this person would text me. I texted my friend about it, who then confirmed to me that it was a fake account by showing me that all of this person’s pictures were posted on the same day.
Fake accounts mostly do not have content on them because the person in charge of the account does not have the time to be consistent with posting items or content.
When you do find an account with quite a number of items or contents posted, the images are mostly online images, and they hardly have any real images or live images on their page.
Another red flag to look out for is if the vendor looks to have downloaded the majority of her product photographs from online. Many vendors are conscious of the implications of product images in promoting the genuineness of their brands before establishing a business. As a result, an Instagram commercial account without unique product photos is more likely to deliver faulty goods.
If you come across an account that has a lot of followers but little engagement, you should be suspicious too. The Hype auditor could help you track if there have been sudden increases in their number of followers and engagement.
There is no one behind the brand.
One of the quickest ways to identify fake Instagram vendors is if there is no way to tell who the owner of the account is. If the profile of the business page doesn’t link to the account or profile of its owner, or if the vendor does not have images or videos of her displaying the goods or talking about them, you should be suspicious.
Every brand has a profit-driven individual behind it. Identifying an owner is one approach to holding brands accountable. If there isn’t a post or tag linked to the owner of an Instagram business account, don’t bother placing an order.
Nobody likes to be accused of being a con artist. People who put their faces in front of an internet brand, on the other hand, will ensure that clients receive only the best service.
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No reviews
This is one of the best ways to identify fake Instagram vendors. A vendor with no reviews on their page or real people tagging them is most likely to be fake. I’ll have you know that reviews could be photoshopped too, so if you need to, you have to/should go extra miles to confirm the genuineness of their claims.
I once wanted to shop for an item with an Instagram vendor that seemed shady. Her really late response, her rudeness, and her inability to give me a detailed explanation of the questions I asked raised my suspicions. I checked through her reviews and I chatted up one of her customers to confirm if they had bought an item from her like she claimed, and that was how I got my response. She was a fake vendor.
The fact is that feedback and reviews can greatly anticipate a product’s effectiveness. Assume that an Instagram business page has no product reviews. It indicates that almost no one purchases from that seller or that people are dissatisfied.
If their price sounds too good to be true
There is a popular Nigerian saying that goes thus: who does not like awoof? And another that says, awoof dey purge belle. This means that people do not like really cheap things, and the latter means that really cheap deals are mostly fake or a scam tactic.
One of the major ways to identify fake Instagram vendors is when they offer their items or services at ridiculously low prices. Some prices will make you wonder if the vendor stole this item or grew it miraculously in their backyard. The items that fall into this category mostly are ladies’ dresses. Vendors will advertise or promote these items with pictures of people wearing the high-quality ones and then deliver the low-quality items. Another item that mostly falls into this category is wigs. There are a lot of “what I ordered versus what I got” cases when it comes to wigs, where a customer is sold an entirely different item from what was promised.
Another thing these vendors do to defraud people is what they call “sales,” in which they claim to be slashing the prices of goods at insanely low rates. ‘Was 120,000 naira, now 20,000 naira,’ na them.
Now don’t get me wrong, I did not say cheap items or services are fake. What I am trying to say is that when it sounds too good to be true, it is probably because it is not true.
With these few points of mine, I hope I have been able to convince and not to confuse you that you should check that Instagram account well and checklist it against these red flags before patronage. Thank you.