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10 Things You Should NEVER Buy Online

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Ten purchases that feel like a steal online until the box arrives, the puppy doesn’t match the photo, or the “vintage Rolex” turns out to be scrap metal.

TheThings Celebrity, the digital entertainment channel that’s built a following since launching in 2015, breaks down the ten categories where clicking “buy now” is more gamble than bargain. The channel’s rundown, 10 Things You Shouldn’t Buy Online, walks through the purchases where sight-unseen shopping stops being convenient and starts being risky — for your wallet, your health, or both. Some of the entries are obvious once you think about it. Others are the exact items people buy online every single day without realizing what they’re exposing themselves to.

• Federal regulators have cracked down on thousands of rogue online pharmacies selling counterfeit or improperly formulated prescription drugs, making unlicensed medication sites a genuine health hazard rather than a minor inconvenience.
• Cosmetics and perfumes top the list because counterfeit makeup can contain toxic ingredients, screen calibration distorts shade matching, and fragrance chemistry simply can’t be judged without smelling it on your own skin first.
• Cars and live pets round out the highest-risk buys — vehicles because there’s no substitute for a test drive and physical inspection, and pets because online anonymity gives puppy mills and fraudulent dealers cover to operate.

Health Products That Can’t Be Trusted Sight Unseen

Prescription medications sit at the top of the list for good reason. Buying pills from an unlicensed site isn’t just a legal gray area — it’s a direct health risk, since counterfeit or mislabeled drugs have prompted federal crackdowns on thousands of rogue online pharmacies. Cosmetics carry a similar danger in miniature: knockoff makeup frequently ships with toxic ingredients substituted for the real formula, and even legitimate listings can look nothing like their photos once your monitor’s color calibration gets involved.

Perfume belongs in the same bucket, though the problem is chemistry rather than counterfeiting. A fragrance reacts differently to every person’s skin, which means the bottle that smelled incredible on someone else’s wrist online can smell completely different — or just wrong — on yours. None of that can be tested through a product photo and a five-star review.

Thousands of unlicensed online pharmacies have been shut down by regulators for selling counterfeit or mislabeled prescription drugs.

Big-Ticket Items That Demand An In-Person Look

Cars are the clearest example of a purchase that simply can’t be done responsibly online. Without a test drive and a physical inspection, buyers have no way to catch hidden mechanical failures, frame damage, or — in outright scam listings — inventory that doesn’t even exist. Furniture and electronics carry a lighter version of the same problem: it’s hard to judge the durability of a couch or the reliability of a gadget from a listing page, and online retailers offering steep discounts often skip the warranties and return policies a brick-and-mortar seller would include.

Jewelry rounds out the big-ticket risks. Assessing the quality of precious metals and gemstones requires seeing and often handling the piece, and the reputability of a given online jeweler is frequently impossible to verify before the money’s already gone through.

Live Animals And The Anonymity Problem

Pets are singled out as one of the most ethically fraught categories on the list. Unethical puppy mills and fraudulent dealers exploit the anonymity of online transactions, listing animals that may be sick, mistreated, or simply not what the photos show. Reputable adoption requires seeing the animal in person, assessing temperament and health, and verifying the seller isn’t running a volume operation designed to move animals fast and disappear.

Counterfeits, Scalped Tickets, And Everything Else

The remainder of the list covers the purchases people make constantly without a second thought. Concert and sporting event tickets bought outside authorized resellers run into rampant counterfeiting. Perishable and even non-perishable foods vary batch to batch in ways only visible in person. Designer clothing and accessories are counterfeited so convincingly that a deal which looks too good to be true almost always is. And hazardous materials — chemicals, flammables, corrosives — are tightly regulated for shipping, making their online sale both risky and, in many cases, outright illegal. Underneath nearly every entry on the list is the same warning: purchases from unsecured or unverified storefronts lacking basic HTTPS encryption put buyers’ financial information at risk regardless of what’s actually being sold.

The through-line of the whole countdown isn’t that online shopping is bad — it’s that anything requiring a test drive, a smell test, a temperament check, or a licensed pharmacist should probably still involve a human being standing in front of you before money changes hands.