Amazon Scam?

The address to report Apple scams is - [email protected] -

I have just changed my password on Amazon and turned off one click !!

Got the BBc one this evening.

If a parcel is delivered to your house containing someone you did not order (and usually you will not discover this until you open it) and a short time later someone arrives and asks for it back as there's been a mistake, BEWARE.

This happened to me. The parcel contained a brand new iPhone. Witching 30 minutes a character arrived saying he was from the delivery firm and he had his boss on the phone. This 'boss' said the item should not have been delivered to me and could I please return it by giving it to his 'courier' .

Do not hand the parcel back. It's a scam,

They have ordered items using your details and had them delivered to your house. If you hand it back you are liable for the value of the goods.

Something not someone!

How did you deal with this Anya?

I told the 'courier' that my son had dropped it back at the local post office to be returned. The courier then swore at me, so I knew something wasn't kosha.

The iPhone has come from Vodafone and was packaged correctly and with an invoice inside. Vodafone had accepted an order from these crooks using a bank card of mine that had been compromised. However my bank had long since cancelled the card and declined to lay out on it.

Vodafone still went ahead and sent the phone to be. I had a long, and angry exchanged of emails and phone calls with them before the sorted it out. Their customer segue is crap.

Similar scams have gone out purporting to be from paypal. Paypal always addresses you by name the scam emails don't.

I have been having constant messages from paypal about my account for the past couple of years. The one and only time i used paypal was about 10 years ago. I always delete them but It makes me nervous as i get so many suspicious emails about other accounts i have and often those i dont and i now delete everything immediately, hoping that i don't delete anything important.

Always click on the email address from whoever has sent it. That usually shows that it's a scam. So many of them nowadays aren't there, and they're getting really good at it! Another tip, if they don't address you by name, they're spam!
Hope that helps. x

I've had several emails over the last week asking me to update my 'BBC account' - I don't have one, and have no idea what this means, but I have deleted it every time. At work we kept getting emails from HMRC, offering a refund on the business VAT, and asking for bank details. I got so angry once I replied with something to the effect of 'Do you think we are all mad, you stupid little crook'but a colleague said I shouldn't even have done that - replying can give them some form of hook to keep going, so now I just delete them.

i just delete anything like that, if they really want to contact me they can write. I dont use paypal or Amazon, prefer to go to the shops and if I do buy online its not often. However, my daughter with the disabilities is the problem now she is living on her own and was always getting phone calls however hard we tried to stop them. So I emailed the Chief Executive of Talk Talk explaining the problem and within hours she had gone out of way to help. Gave my daughter a dedicated person and phone number so she could ring them and they would advise and help and track back the number etc. Its certainly worked for her and put my mind at rest.

Grandpa's phone started receiving unsolicited premium texts. Did nt show up on his mobile in any way. I only found out checking the direct debit bill at end of month which looked a bit high. £4.50 a week was going out on a premium text. BT said it's a scam masquerading as a Tesco competition on email. Watch out!

I got scammed recently. A couple of years ago I signed a 12 month contract with Avira Internet Security after getting a virus on my lap top. They were recommended by AskJack in the Guardian.

I decided not to renew the contract. They send a slew of emails pleading with me to renew and I unsubscribed.

Eight months later they took £60.99 emailed me a copy of 'my' Order with a thank you for it and an invoice for it. It was three times the original order.

I immediately demanded the money back, informed my card company and reported it to Action Fraud online.

They did return the money a few days later after sending me chummy emails which made me even crosser and I got a replacement card.

I had checked them out and they had some reasonable reviews. After this happened I checked them out again and eventually found their facebook page. Virtually all the reviews were people warning about money being swiped without authority and it was always a lot more than the original contract. They went back to 2014.

They obviously work on a numbers basis. If they take money from thousands of people a few may just not notice or second guess themselves and wonder if they clicked something by mistake. The fact that some has to be repaid doesn't bother them.

They sent me an email asking if I was happy with the way they had responded to my emails. I said that it was always good when thieves replace what they have stolen.

If anyone has a contract with Avira (not the insurance company) - change your bank card details before the contract expires.

You can delete the messages permanently although they may well try again under a different name. For Microsoft Outlook Express, do not open the message or click on any link. Just highlight the message then go to the top toolbar and click on "Message" then click on "block sender" and they will delete the message and send it to Deleted Messages. This is not guaranteed to stop the scammers but I have been doing this for about 3 years and rarely get any spam now. Perhaps they think I am just not worth the bother!

Gosh, Anya, that's bloody scary!

My fave reply to phone scammers, whether the stupid windows thing or saying they are from a bank, is to blast out in my best panto voice: OH NO YOU'RE NOT!

Wait for the dead silence then hang up.

Thanks for all these scam alerts. There should be a SCAM ALERT section and not just under chat. I only saw this because of the regular GN morning email with popular topics.

Good idea. I'd certainly be grateful.

I regularly receive messages from banks I don't have accounts with asking for my details.
When I do receive ones from my bank I feel maybe scams I forward them to the banks phishing department.
Sadly these scammers must make money or they wouldn't go to all the effort they do!
Sad for the people who are taken in by them ?

Anya

and thank you everyone else for the tips
Minniesmum good idea, I will try that

I have decided to make a game of the scam phone calls . If it is concerning windows I say that I have lovely replacement windows and witter on about them . If anything else I say I am the cleaner and please do not tell anyone I am here illegally . I pretent to be alarmed by their call and they soon hang up .Instead of dreading these calls I quite enjoy them .

Lewlew I did post quite extensively on GN about that scam at the time, but it was a couple of years ag and new members will not be aware of it.

Just had scammers pretending to be Microsoft on the phone. Poor wee fellow didn't like being asked to repeat things and hung up when I said I couldn't see anything on my screen and could he tell me what he could see. Hope they call back it was good fun ?

I get lots of scam e-mails from "PayPal" - I send them directly to PayPal.

HMRC do not send e-mails or phone you regarding Tax matters unless you are already in correspondence with them (I used to work for HMRC) I do get e-mails from them occasionally promising rebates which are often badly spelt/bad grammer - again I forward to HMRC

Bank scams - so many from Banks I don't deal with

The way they address you & the grammer are often a give away -being addressed as "Dear Value Customer" ?????

I have "Caller Display" on my phone so I don't answer any calls from numbers I don't recognise, the ones that annoy me are where they withold the number - I cut them of as soon as I know it's a "cold caller" with a polite "not interested"

The delivery scam I was talking about

I lately have been inundated with scam and phishing email, mostly PayPal and HMRC but also Apple,Amazon, British Telecom, Netflix, Santander, eBay et al.

The HMCR emails tell you that you are entitled to a tax refund and to supply your bank details in order for the refund to be paid into your account.
The others mainly ask for verification of your bank/credit card details.

If you tap on the name of the sender, it will display their email address. You can immediately see that it is false (although some try to appear genuine by throwing, for example "paypal" in the address.

The most important things to remember is (1) Do NOT reply to the email.
(2) Do NOT open any attachments - these often contain malware and viruses.

Forward the email to the true company, for example:
[email protected]

You can always find the address on the relevant website - just type in "phishing" "scam" or "spoof" in the Search box.