A new scam to beware of

[springyzone]

A friend's son just had a bad experience selling on ebay.

(Not that this is ebay's fault)

The man is in his mid 20s and has this new phone worth $1500 but soon after buying it, he decided he wanted a swisher model (I know, it seems ridiculous to me too but then again i still have a flip phone, so I'm hardly up with trends).

Anyway, he has sold a few things on ebay in the past with good results & decided to list his phone.

Got a message from a man who said he was very interested but would he be able to look at it first.

Man called around, luckily was on the front porch, had a look and said yes, just what I am after, I will take it, but can you give me a receipt. The seller looked to the side just for a second and the man took off, ran away. Seller is young and brawny, took off after him.

Man jumped in a car down the street where a driver was already at the wheel and car roared off.

Seller got number plate.

Went to police station. Number plate doesn't check out-stolen.

But here is the rub. The police said this is happening a fair bit, people turn up to 'have a look' and then do a runner.

The phone has been blocked but police said because it is new, some other buyer will buy first, find that out later.

My friend wanted people to just know to beware of people who come to your home, especially if it is something small & valuable you are selling.

[lyndal1838]

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@clarry100 wrote:

There was another scam I read about somewhere just yesterday... It goes like this...

You get a phone call from someone claiming to be from a courier company saying they have a delivery for you and asking if you will be home to receive it today.

They turn up at your door later on looking like a real delivery company driver with a bunch of flowers and a bottle of wine.

You say you are not expecting this and ask who its from. They say its from someone anonymous and they don't know who.

They request that you have to pay a small delivery fee because the delivery includes alcohol.
They explain that they also need to confirm the age & identity of the recipient to ensure they are over 18.

You offer to pay the small sum in cash but they explain that their drivers cannot accept cash.
And that payment will have to be made via a credit card.

You agree and they produce a mobile card reader device where you enter your details to make payment in the usual way.

All looks good, you have lovely flowers and a bottle of wine from some anonymous person.

Then you later find out that your credit card has been cleaned out to the max limit.

The details you left behind on their reader has given them all the info they need to create a fake credit card.

The moral is... don't pay at the door for something you are not expecting to receive.

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I have to say that is the clunkiest scam I have ever heard of.

Couriers do not/cannot accept any sort of payment.   If there are any outstanding charges to be paid by the recipient they have to ring the company and pay over the phone before the parcel will even leave the depot.

[springyzone]

It is suss but then again, people don't always know the regulations and can be caught out.

My friend (the one whose son lost his phone) also had a phone call from someone who said they were from the taxation office, she was behind in her taxes and needed to rectify it as it had become a police matter.

Now she was shocked by the call, her husband was there & said immediately-scam. My friend said that okay, it sounds ridiculous now that she was almost taken in, but when she was on the phone, the person sounded very professional and feasible and what upset her most was she was sure they were up to date with everything, which is why she called her husband over.

She's not a stupid person. She's well educated, quite wealthy & extremely well travelled, so you'd think she would be more savvy, more up with the ways of the world.

But there it is, just about anyone can get sucked in I guess, if a scam is good enough.

[clarry100]

We've had a couple of these ATO phone calls too.

But the dead giveaway is that are talking with an Indian sounding accent.

Bit like the old Windows Technical Services one that was around a couple of years back.

[lyndal1838]

It is still around Clarry.

And another one that has started up is a phone call supposedly from Telstra telling me that they are going to disconnect my internet because my computer is infecting their equipment.....and I am not even with Telstra.

They don't get any further than this because I scream as loud as I can "Scammer" and hang up.

I have a rule of thumb these days.....if I have to say hello more than once and there is a lot of call centre noise in the background and the caller has a heavy Indian/Pakistani accent it is a scam.

[springyzone]

I used to hate being rude on the phone but nowadays if I see overseas caller  come up, I don't answer it. Even if it has an interstate number I tend to ignore.

If I answer & hear a lot of call centre noise, I hang up. I've got a lot ruder in my old age.

[lyndal1838]

Springy by the time you get to 70 you will have learned to be very rude on the phone to these scammers.

About a month ago I was having mobility problems and often did not get to the phone before the answering machine cut in.  Only about 1 call in 6 would leave a message and were legit calls.  The rest were call centre calls.

[*tippy*toes*]

Lyndal, get on the do not call register. I think you need to re register every 2 years, but it certainly slows them up. Charities are exempt, but when I still had a phone attached to my landline, I went from getting up to 20 calls a DAY to 1 or 2 a year (that weren't charities). If they do call after you've registered, you tell them you are on the register and if you report them, the fine can be up to $1mil. That usually gets them to hang up really quickly. You don't even have time to be rude or hang up on them!

[lyndal1838]

Tippy I am on the DNC Register but these call centres are overseas and the fine does not apply to them.  They just do as they please.

"
I rarely get a call from an Australian charity and those that I do get are from charities that I do support so I don't really mind about them....I certainly would not be reporting them.

[clarry100]

We have a voip phone service and it has a function to block calls coming from a silent number. We don't know any real people with silent numbers so that partddoesn't bother us.
Also our telstra broadband line has no phone connected. So these days all these kinda calls have pretty much ended. We get the odd one but when you have to day hello 3/4 times and you hear the fake call centre chatter in the background we just hang up.
I wouldn't be rude to them tho. You might find if you do they will be calling you at 2am just to get back.
So just hang up on them is all I do.

[ooak3]

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@lyndal1838 wrote:

It is still around Clarry.

And another one that has started up is a phone call supposedly from Telstra telling me that they are going to disconnect my internet because my computer is infecting their equipment.....and I am not even with Telstra.

They don't get any further than this because I scream as loud as I can "Scammer" and hang up.

I have a rule of thumb these days.....if I have to say hello more than once and there is a lot of call centre noise in the background and the caller has a heavy Indian/Pakistani accent it is a scam.

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when we used to have a land line and were getting a lot of those kind of called i got a whistle  said nothing and just blew it as loud as i could 

i can be a cranky witch sometimes lol  just so sick of being harrassed 

and the thing that makes me the most upset is that these rip of low lifes think im ( we ) are stupid and they are soooo clever

if they were clever they would better there lives and pull themselves out of the gutter !!