Free M&S Afternoon Tea Hamper Scam

nickw56

I recently (foolishly)  responded to an email purporting to be a survey with an M&S Afternoon Tea Hamper as a free reward. On completion of the survey I was asked to pay £1.00 for postage. My debit card was charged £1.00. No hamper arrived. Then a few days later they charged £53 to my card.  Fortunately this payment was declined due to insufficient funds in my account. I contacted my Bank and they told me that they had blocked this "merchant" from making further charges to my account.  However they continued to attempt to take 4 further payments each a few days apart.   Eventually I changed my card number but this has not stopped the fraudster from trying to take money from my account.  My bank tells me that I need to contact the merchant to cancel this "subscription" but I have no contact details. and the only option available to stop these actions seems to be to close my account. I have now received the same email several more times and have blocked the sender on each occaision. It seems strange to me that my bank (Chase) appears to be unable to stop these attempted frauds.

Ectophile

Your post seems to be contradicting itself.  You say that Chase has blocked the merchant, but also that Chase is unable to stop the fraud.

Provided that Chase are blocking every attempt to take money, there's nothing more to do.  They will eventually give up.

parkerparker

Just received one of these Tea Hamper phishing messages myself. Looked like a scam and I'm expecting further phishing attempts following the recent cyber problems M&S have had. Good that Chase stopped any further attempts to take money but I can understand that they can't stop attempted frauds. Thanks for the warining.

Albermarle

Next time check the e mail address it came from. Clearly was not a proper M&S one, on the one I got.