Thanks to companies like Parcel Broker, it’s never been easier to send goods around the world. We pride ourselves on great prices and excellent service for all our customers.
Unfortunately, there are people out there who aren’t as helpful and professional as Parcel Broker, and are looking for a way to cheat you out of your hard-earned cash. With no industry safe from the scammers, we’ve put together some of the more dubious parcel scams which have been reported.
The parcel mule
Scammers advertise for an individual to help them get hold of an item which they say isn’t for sale in their home country. The idea is that you receive the goods for them, and hire your own courier to send the parcel on to them, in exchange for payment. They then purchase items using stolen credit cards and have them sent to your address. When the bank or retailer hears that a stolen card has been used to purchase an item, the name and address they have is yours.
The missed delivery
It’s happened to us all – an unexpected parcel means a missed delivery and a card with details of who to call to rearrange delivery for when you’re at home. You dial the number, and it connects you to a premium rate phone line, with calls costing hundreds of pounds, which go straight into the scammers' pockets. Action Fraud work to shut these phone lines down as quickly as possible, but it doesn’t take long for another to spring up in its place.
The email invoice
If you ship items regularly, you’re probably used to receiving your invoices by email, and you’ve probably used a variety of carriers such as UPS, DX, DHL, FedEx, TNT, Pallex, and Palletways over the years. Scammers regularly send out very convincing looking emails, pretending to be from these companies, with a file attachment which is supposed to be your invoice. In fact, the attachment is a virus which could cause all sorts of trouble for your computer.
The hostage parcel
Similar to the missed delivery scam, a card arrives through your door, or even a message via email, saying that a valuable parcel is waiting for collection at a local depot, but you’ll have to pay a release fee to the company to claim it. While some companies are legitimately allowed to ask you to pay surcharges, such as Royal Mail or Parcelforce where the sender has not paid enough to cover postage, the only other reason for requiring you to pay a surcharge would be a fee from customs.
We believe that using an all in one solution like Parcel Broker can help you combat the con artists. We only deal with trusted companies, ensuring great prices for our customers, with rates which aren’t usually available to the public. You’re in charge the entire time, thanks to our easy to use website, and helpful customer service staff. Our comprehensive parcel sending service can save you time, money and a lot of stress.