I got Scammed.

[Bill]

I had a near disaster last week having fallen foul of an internet scam while trying to purchase some more solar panels. Buying online on the Google marketplace everything looked fine. The scammers though had virtually cloned the name, address, and logo of an established UK company even down to their website the secure padlock symbol. Everything looked in order, no special offers or too good to be true deals but they did claim to have the stock I wanted.

The panels cost nearly £500 and normally for this I’d use a credit card, but the company asked that payments over a certain limit to be made by bank transfer which again is not uncommon. I paid using the banks mobile app which checked the validity of the company name and its account and sort code, again all ok. I received a confirmation email but given I’d done this in the early hours of a weekend I wasn’t expecting to hear about delivery times for a few days.

When I’d still not heard anything after three days, I tried to email them to ask for a delivery date, but the email bounced back as invalid. I rang their number, but the line just stayed dead, not even a ring tone. I went to their website and now that doesn’t exist either, so I immediately reported it to the bank’s fraud department. After going through all the obvious tricks and scams that go on, they agreed that I’d not been silly in what I’d done, and they’d investigate, but couldn’t guarantee I’d get my money back because I didn’t use a credit card.

The good news is that the money was back in our account the following day and now I’m just waiting to hear from the bank as to what happened.

Phew! That was bloody lucky.

 

Bill 😊

[Evil Sid]

i am always wary if i have to shop online.

normally i will look online and if possible call the company and order by phone.

one of the few times i have had to do it via the web was for a new gas lift for my chair. worked out fine and was for only about twenty quid and arrived within two days.

the last time i ordered online was my car battery the other week.

payment was fine the fitting was a nightmare.

what is normally a ten minute job took almost an hour and a half.

the reason being that the battery that they supplied and initially fitted was for a Chinese/Asian model of car.

apparently the positive and negative are opposite to European cars. result smoke from somewhere and car dead whilst they figured out what to do.

finally they located at least one blown fuse and fitted a different battery.

still had to faff around later as the fuse to the radio had blown and that is in the back of the radio. no great loss as i only have it on to drown out the engine noise.

[Bill]

What absolutely miff me off about all these scams is the attitude of those with the ability to do something about stopping it. The bank contacted me the other day to run through a long-winded prepared script of what I need to do to protect myself from scams but offered nothing as to what steps the bank were taking to try and stop this happening again.

When I asked if this criminal activity had been reported to the national fraud people or even the other bank, he said it would be up to me to do this. I did try the national fraud reporting website but after reading through endless pages of how again I need to prevent this happening it offered nothing other than for me to report it to Google, which as everyone knows is a complete and utter waste of time.

 

Bill 😊

[Evil Sid]

i must admit i get several of these letters and texts from the bank telling how to be safe using technology for banking.

I also keep getting texts saying i can use my phone to do online banking. If i thought that it was secure i just might.But i even worry about my pc and that has at least two levels of anti virus and anti phishing software installed on it. my phone has zip.

in the event i do log into my account it asks me if i want a text confirmation or do i trust the login device, I always opt for the text feeling that it might just give that bit of extra security and stop me panicking that somebody else has accessed my account. The only problem i have with the system as such is that it gives me the option to not have the text. so if somebody did access my account they could stop me getting a text by saying trust this login device.

reporting anything but murder or a racist attack to the police these days is seen as pointless. mate of mine reported that there was somebody trying to get into his shed. three days later a police car turned up to ask a few questions like "did you get a good look at them and could you describe them." middle of the night pitch black and the person had their face concealed. "oh yes of course i can officer he had arms and legs and a head".....🤦‍♀️