Premium rate phone scam BEWARE!!

bassman

The Trading Standards Office are making people aware of the following postal
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). DO
NOT call this number, as 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. If you do receive a card
with these details, then please contact Royal Mail Fraud on 020 7239 6655 or
ICSTIS (the premium rate service regulator) at https://www.icstis.org.uk
<http://www.icstis.org.uk/&gt; or your local trading standards office.

This is a genuine scam and is under investigation by ICSTIS. Please also
advise non-outlook users of this scam."

PeteMc

About 10 entries down is a post with the same scam and I'm sure it's been posted here before that.

trisontana

PeteMc wrote:

About 10 entries down is a post with the same scam and I'm sure it's been posted here before that.

And you are NOT charged £15 as soon as you start to make the call. This is impossible. The maximum charge for a premium rate call is £1.50 a minute. So you would have to stay on the line for 7.5 minutes to rack up that charge. This is a classic case of where a genuine scam is being added onto the back of an urban myth.

bassman

trisontana wrote:

And you are NOT charged £15 as soon as you start to make the call. This is impossible. The maximum charge for a premium rate call is £1.50 a minute. So you would have to stay on the line for 7.5 minutes to rack up that charge. This is a classic case of where a genuine scam is being added onto the back of an urban myth.

I just copied an email sent to me.....and you are correct....but £15 divided by £1.50 is 10minutes.

trisontana

bassman wrote:

I just copied an email sent to me

That's how urban myths get spread around the net !

Sorry, my maths were a bit out ! It is 10 minutes.

bassman

trisontana wrote:

That's how urban myths get spread around the net !

Sorry, my maths were a bit out ! It is 10 minutes.

But what does it matter......whether my facts are 100% correct or not, I thought it more important to get the message out, rather than trawl through loads of forum posts to see if it had been highlighted before, I now see that the scam was on the go from December 2005, and the number has now been closed down, and the company are being investigated, but if this thread makes one person more aware of these scams ......then it has served its purpose.

trisontana

bassman wrote:

But what does it matter......whether its 100% correct or not, I thought it more important to get the message out, rather than trawl through loads of forum posts to see if it had been highlighted before, I now see that the scam was on the go from December 2005, and the number has now been closed down, and the company are being investigated, but if this thread makes one person more aware of these scams ......then it has served its purpose.

I agree and it is sometimes very easy to believe these myths. Even so-called "experts" can be conned into believing them. I once heard a policeman come on the radio and warn about that old story of some woman knocking on your door, saying that her car had broken down, and could she phone her husband. She is then have supposed to have dialled a "special" number and left you with a huge phone bill of over a hundred pounds. The poor chap had to come onto the radio the next day and admit the whole thing was an urban legend.

I used to work for a very well known energy company and that myth about using mobile phones in petrol stations found its way into the company's safety bulletin. We tried to tell the bosses that the whole thing was nonsense but they still persisted in spreading this myth around.

Heinz

The even more annoying thing is that this very same myth was circulated in an official Essex Police Neighbourhood Watch newsletter to every house in my village and, when I asked the local police Inspector to ensure the author was advised accordingly and made to issue an immediate and comprehensive correction to the same houses, he passed the message on to the numpty NW author - who insisted it was true* and he knew someone who'd seen someone else's phone bill detailing such a charge!

If the police are fool enough to give credence to such things, there's no hope.

* Even after I'd offered him proof:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=2663913&postcount=3

Fifer

bassman wrote:

But what does it matter......whether my facts are 100% correct or not

It matters because there is so much spam and rubbish on the net that inaccuracies such as this make people assume your post is just more of it. When I read 'you will already have been billed £15 for the phone call', I disregarded the rest of the post, knowing that the maximum charge was £1.50 per minute.

bassman

Fifer wrote:

It matters because there is so much spam and rubbish on the net that inaccuracies such as this make people assume your post is just more of it. When I read 'you will already have been billed £15 for the phone call', I disregarded the rest of the post, knowing that the maximum charge was £1.50 per minute.

I bet you more people didn't know the max was £1.50 a minute, than did know.......and more people hopefully will appreciate a positive forum rather than a negative one.

Browntoa

I did a search on this false "scam" earlier on, there are 13 posts about the exact same thing on the forum , took me 3 seconds to find them, I wonder why you did'nt manage to find them before you posted it AGAIN ??

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/pds-phone-scam.html

Although the scam outlined in the message was true, the claim that an immediate £15 fee was charged as well as the per minute cost is unfounded. ICSTIS notes that, "the reference to £15 is an urban myth. It is not possible for a £15 charge to be made on connection."