Hi all

With Christmas looming, the chances are that you, like me, will be ordering kits and other goodies online. I've just received a rather worrying message from a good friend:

"Can you circulate this around - it has been confirmed by Royal Mail. The Trading Standards Office are making people aware of the following 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 02072396655 or ICSTIS (the premium rate service regulator) at
www.icstis.org.uk "

I have no other details of the potential scam. Perhaps someone else can fill in more details. In the meantime, I guess the moral is to beware of any unexpected "delivery notes".

All the best

Rowan

We get a lot of these messages at this time of year ( I work in a computer dept at a University).

Although there was a scam similar running in 2005 the details are actually incorrect and the warning itself has turned into a hoax spam e-mail.

There was a real scam in Dec 2005 where people recieve a card and were told to phone a number, this was a premium rate number but the rate was £1.50 and not £15. ICSTIS have turned this number off now.

Unfortunately what was a legitimate warning has turned into one of those annoying "Warn everyone in your address book" hoaxs that is designed to waste peoples time and bung up e-mail systems.

Although the advice to be wary of unexpected mail (e-mail or snail) is still good advice.

if you spot the person delivering the card, can they receive whats known as a "chinning" as a sort of xmas tip?

Sadly a "chinning" is a poor tip for these hard pressed fraudsters. If I get one I will be giving them " a good shoeing"... :-)

A good "Spanking" is a better :-) :-) .
Andy

My faith in man kind is rekindled! It's nice to know that not all the thieves, lairs, crooks, schemers and scoundrels have moved to America, and been elected to office! :-)

if no chinning is allowed i'll have to resort to giving them a proper
banjo-ing

No chance mate. We only sent you and the Aussies some of them. We still have plenty of the above in office in this country.