A not very cheery Christmas Postal Scam
I'm alerted that Trading Standards Officers are making people aware of the following scam:
A card is posted through your door from a company called PDS (Parcel Delivery Service) suggesting that they were unable to deliver a parcel and that you need to contact them on 0906 6611911 (a premium rate number). This is a mail scam originating from Belize.
If you call the number and you start to hear a recorded message you will already have been billed £15 for the phone call.
nick
posted by Nick Colbourne @ 16:25
2 comments
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2 Comments:
Hi Nick,
This "warning" is a mixture of very old and out-of-date news and an urban myth. PDS was closed down in 2005 and the part about the "instant" £15 was never true. What we are actually seeing here is a chain email which has done the rounds for the last three years. For more information,see this statement from Phonepayplus(the new name for ICSTIS) :-
9 October 2008
A STATEMENT FROM PHONEPAYPLUS ABOUT THE CURRENT ‘POSTAL SCAM' CHAIN EMAIL
PhonepayPlus, the phone-paid services regulator, is aware that a chain e-mail about an alleged postal scam is being circulated on the internet. The email refers to the Royal Mail, Trading Standards and ICSTIS (PhonepayPlus' former name).
PhonepayPlus appreciates that recipients of the email may want to find out more information about the alleged scam and has therefore issued the following statement:
The chain email refers to a service that was shut down by us in December 2005.
We subsequently fined the company that was operating the service, Studio Telecom (based in Belize), £10,000.
The service is NO LONGER running and has NOT been running since December 2005.
You do NOT need to contact us, or the Royal Mail, about this service as it was stopped almost three years ago.
If you receive a copy of the email warning you about the alleged scam, please do NOT forward it to others. Instead, please forward this statement from PhonepayPlus.
Please go to www.phonepayplus.org.uk/pdfs_news/ConsumerGuide.pdf for useful information about how to recognise phone-paid services and understand what they cost, and some simple tips to help you enjoy using services with confidence.
For more detailed information about our work, please visit www.phonepayplus.org.uk.
Thanks for that DBC, I've also sent this on to the source that sent it to me. Some good news on these crappy scams.
nick
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