For many years Bed, Bath & Beyond was a popular housewares and specialty items store. I always enjoyed shopping there and if you ever shopped there you may remember their receipts with ream upon ream of coupons. In any event, the company came upon hard times and declared bankruptcy earlier this year and closed the last of their physical locations in August. However, the company, which was bought by Overstock.com continues to operate as an online store and therein lies the scam. Effective scams often have a kernel of truth to lure you in. In this case, people are aware that Bed, Bath & Beyond went bankrupt so they are susceptible to postings on Facebook and other social media that appear to be from Bed, Bath & Beyond offering tremendous online bargains in their going out of business sale. If you click on the posts, they take you to a website that appears to be that of Bed, Bath & Beyond. However, if you purchase anything from the counterfeit site, you don’t get anything in return.
TIPS
I have often warned you about counterfeit websites. The less sophisticated ones can be immediately identified by URLs that have nothing to do with the company or poor grammar. However, some of the counterfeit sites appear quite legitimate and with the use of AI it is even easier for a scammer to create a legitimate looking site. The best thing to do if you are considering whether to make a purchase from any website that appears to be of a legitimate company is to check if the URL really is that of the company. One way to do this is to go to ICANN which registers domain names and put in the URL of the site you are directed to in order to see if it is owned by the real company or a scammer. An ICANN lookup will let you know who really owns the particular website. Here is a link to ICANN’s lookup tool. https://lookup.icann.org/enIf what appears to be a website of Bed, Bath & Beyond ends up being owned by someone in North Korea, for example, you know it is a scam.
As for Bed, Bath & Beyond, their website in the United States is http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com and in Canada is http://www.bedbathandbeyond.ca.
It is also important to point out that whenever you shop whether online or in a brick and mortar store, you should use your credit card rather than your debit card. The laws protecting you from fraudulent purchases made using your credit card are much stronger than those when you use your debit card.
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