I feel dumb as we recently got a request for a printed calendar sample through our www.flarecalendars.co.uk. Not an unusual occurrence at this time of the year, so we sent out the sample in the post. When I rang the number from my mobile they gave it said ‘Thank you very much you now have access to our website for one week.” Apparently they will charge me £3 for the privilege. A text then followed and giving me access to a website with a pin number for gallicflair.co.uk which is supposedly a resource about learning to speak French.

What’s annoying about this is the time and money wasted on what is essentially a scam. The people behind this probably have written programs to fish the internet for names, postal address and email address which then use to complete online forms hoping people like me would then think it’s legitimate and innocently ring. Beware or you’ll feel like a mug like me.

Note the number was 01613057101…don’t ring it…I’m only displaying it here as a scam warning for others searching to see if it is legitimate.

This was pretty harmless and I suppose it’s given me something to write about. However it brings me onto a bigger issue that a few of our ecommerce clients have experienced. A few clients have received orders and payment for goods which they have shipped only to find out later that the orders were fraudulent. Either they never receive the payment as the customer cancels it or it was a stolen card or the address the goods were delivered to was a temporary one. We use SagePay to process ecommerce orders and we advise using their 3rd man traffic light system or in some cases defer processing the transaction till you’ve done some background checking on suspicious orders. SagePay have a helpful guide to preventing online fraud at http://www.sagepay.com/guide_to_trading_online/preventing_online_fraud.

Have you ever been caught out by online fraudsters?