A free ipad from Jacamo! Not really. A puzzling occurrence.
procleon
Forumite 11 Posts
Something really strange happened three days ago: I received a plastic bag from the postman (delivery before 1 p.m. paid but I did not have to sign for it). It was correctly addressed to me so I opened it, even though I was not expecting anything. Inside was a beautifully packaged ipad and a customer advice note from Jacamo that told me that the ipad cost £429.00 and was intended for me. Now, I do have a family member who does, from time to time, bestow expensive digital gadgets on me in order to keep me from becoming utterly outdated, so I applied to him first. He said that he had not sent me an ipad; Jacamo was not the company from which he would have bought an ipad; he asked whether I needed a new ipad. It was a bit embarrassing.
I checked my credit card and debit card accounts and found no ipad sized debits.
So all that was left was to ask Jacamo what was going on. I used their chat line because their phone line is exorbitantly priced. I am not entirely happy with their responses but I must stress that the two employees with whom I chatted were polite and (I think) as helpful as they could be in the circumstances. So, the first person I chatted with asked for my address and told me that Jacamo would send somebody to pick up the ipad. I said that I was not worried about returning their ipad, I was worried about the use of my personal details and wanted to know the last 4 digits of the card used to pay as I might need to replace one of my cards.
It took a little repeated explanation of my anxieties and the threat of keeping the ipad till I got some answers to get me transferred to their fraud dept. The answer was that the ipad had been ordered on credit by an unknown third party, so no card was involved. I think that Jacamo admits that my details were taken from their customer database: over ten years ago I used to buy clothes for my father from them.
Jacamo advised me to "update email and password with ...other creditors." Do they mean other online stores? That will prove time-consuming! They told me: "The account will be closed. All information that this account has generated will be removed from your credit file": and that the latter action may take up to 28 days. They sent me lengthy "We take fraud very seriously at Jacamo..." blahdy blah and advised me I could report the matter to the Police. I asked the person from their fraud team to email me a copy of our chat (so that I can read it with furrowed brow for several long minutes) and he was kind enough to do so.
Now, of course I shall not hold the ipad hostage but I don't think the whole problem is solved. I ask myself - and have asked Jacamo in an email- what did the perpetrator of the fraud hope to gain from it? After all, I got the ipad. Am I going to have a burglary? Is somebody who is not from Jacamo going to try and collect it from me? I appeal to the collective wisdom of the Forum.
I checked my credit card and debit card accounts and found no ipad sized debits.
So all that was left was to ask Jacamo what was going on. I used their chat line because their phone line is exorbitantly priced. I am not entirely happy with their responses but I must stress that the two employees with whom I chatted were polite and (I think) as helpful as they could be in the circumstances. So, the first person I chatted with asked for my address and told me that Jacamo would send somebody to pick up the ipad. I said that I was not worried about returning their ipad, I was worried about the use of my personal details and wanted to know the last 4 digits of the card used to pay as I might need to replace one of my cards.
It took a little repeated explanation of my anxieties and the threat of keeping the ipad till I got some answers to get me transferred to their fraud dept. The answer was that the ipad had been ordered on credit by an unknown third party, so no card was involved. I think that Jacamo admits that my details were taken from their customer database: over ten years ago I used to buy clothes for my father from them.
Jacamo advised me to "update email and password with ...other creditors." Do they mean other online stores? That will prove time-consuming! They told me: "The account will be closed. All information that this account has generated will be removed from your credit file": and that the latter action may take up to 28 days. They sent me lengthy "We take fraud very seriously at Jacamo..." blahdy blah and advised me I could report the matter to the Police. I asked the person from their fraud team to email me a copy of our chat (so that I can read it with furrowed brow for several long minutes) and he was kind enough to do so.
Now, of course I shall not hold the ipad hostage but I don't think the whole problem is solved. I ask myself - and have asked Jacamo in an email- what did the perpetrator of the fraud hope to gain from it? After all, I got the ipad. Am I going to have a burglary? Is somebody who is not from Jacamo going to try and collect it from me? I appeal to the collective wisdom of the Forum.
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If the fraudster has set to their own contact details for phone/email they could track the parcel and hope to intercept it if left outside.
Do you live in a built up city area or the depths of the countryside? I can imagine if you're in the heart of a busy place - it's possible that whoever applied might have been waiting at a distance to try and intercept the delivery driver - but nobody really knows.
Some of your data has been compromised somewhere along the line, so you should be extra vigilant for these next few months, and keep a very close eye on your credit history.
If it breaks, well it wasn't working right anyway.
Did I really write "could of"? I was always correcting "of" for "have" in exercise books. Alas.
I'd confirm with Jacamo exactly which courier they were sending and when.
Have you checked your credit files as suggested?
I am still thinking about the credit scores. I had a look at Experian; they want to know far more about me than I am comfortable with telling them. I once got a letter from (I think) Equifax saying that my name, address and d.o.b. had been hacked from their files; I had never used them but somebody else must have checked me, perhaps a bank? Anyway, they offered me a credit check for free in compensation; I did not take them up. Apart from my credit card, which I pay off every month, I do not ask for credit and have no loans. I do not see myself ever asking for loans. On the other hand, the last six months of a very dear aunt's life were made very difficult when somebody fraudulently used her details to take out a credit card. Still thinking.