Accessory Advice

A Lesson In Purchasing Caution - Eforcity

I was visiting one of my favorite site - fatwallet.com and noticed a large number of deals related to the online merchant Eforcity.com.  Prices on these items seemed so low I had to question what was happening.  Some prices were so low it would not even cover the cost of shipping the item out to the customer.  This should be a huge red flag something else is going on.

I started with their contact information and BBB report.  They are located in California and have a good BBB report.  So far so good right?  Wrong.  Next I looked at the seals on the bottom of the page.  They all worked except for the TRUSTe seal.  I went to the TRUSTe website and found eforcity not in their list of members.  I searched the TRUSTe site just to make sure I did not miss anything only to find that eforcity has no record with TRUSTe. 

Hmm, big time red flags.  So they have a face privacy seal on their website.  That led me to the privacy policy.  Here is what I found -

“Our site’s registration form requires users to give us contact information (name and email address) and demographic information (zip code, age, or income level). We use customer contact information from the registration form to send the user information about our company and promotional material from some of our partners. ”

“Our site uses an order form for customers to request information, products, and services. We collect visitor’s contact information (email address) and financial information (account or credit card numbers). Contact information from the order form is used to send our customers orders, our company information, and promotional materials from some of our partners.”

“We run contests on our site in which we ask visitors for contact information (email address) and demographic information (zip code, age, or income level). We use contact information from our contests to send users information about our company and promotional materials from some of our partners.”

 Basically, this is an example of a privacy policy that allows them to sale your information to anyone.  This information can be very valuable as the National Do Not Call Registry has had a big impact on telemarketing.  By buying from Eforcity, your registration on the do not call list can be legally voided.  So you may save a couple of bucks but is it worth it to get a ton of spam and phone calls during dinner?

My answer to this is no way.  I personally will spend my money elsewhere.

In doing some more research, things get even more interesting regarding the validity of rating you read on the company.  See here.