So I got a notification from my debit card that I need to look into a recent transaction. I checked and realized that there was £32 charge that I most certainly did not put on it.
I had to cancel my old card and request for a new one but it has put me off online shopping. For what it's worth, I don't think it's a scam because I actually made a purchase from the website and the attempt to debit me may have been an error.
Yesterday, the original order that got me to the website was delivered, so I at least know it's not a scam website. However, it is possible that their platform has bugs that attempt to take payment from you after you make a successful purchase.
It is also possible that they have some fraudulent terms and conditions written in fine print that forces customers to pay for some type of subscription after making the original purchase. All I can say is that there's definitely something dodgy going on and I almost paid for it.
The only reason the payment didn't go through is because have a separate bank account that I use for purchases and things like that. My main account number only deals with our phone bills and transfers to my expenditure account.
So, the bottom line is that if you haven't already been doing it, start now. Always have two bank accounts; one that never interacts with the world and the other that you manually fund from your main account to interact with the world.
This way, even if you interact with a dodgy website, you can simply cancel the card and avoid any significant losses in the process. All I lost in this process was £3 and that's for the delivery of my new card after the old one was immediately destroyed.