By admin
Everywhere you look spammers, scammers, fraudsters tricksters and conmen and I am mad as hell!!!
Every day I receive well over 500 emails pretty much all of them a pile of trash.
Ok to be fair I have deliberately been sending my email address all over the place, replying to spammers and opening emails from banks I have never used in a very successful attempt to harvest as much spam as possible but that is besides the point!
A large number of the emails are laughable, but some of these scammers are in fact becoming extremely sophisticated.
In these times of social networking online, online banking, online dating online etc etc the opportunities for the scammer are growing exponentially.
This site isn’t all about spammers though it’s about any scams, cons and tricks on and offline that I come across. I will be sharing a few tips to try to avoid the scams and to a large extent using this as a channel to vent my frustration.
Feel free to comment on my articles or if you have your own interesting story of malpractice let me know on info@scams-online.com
Yes I am aware that posting your email online ensures you get plenty of spam
SHARE . . . → Read More: Introduction
By admin
If you use the UK train network you have probably come across the trainline website.
In itself it is a very good site – it is easy to navigate and is very useful for finding your train times and finding out the prices of tickets. (Don’t start me off on ticket prices and why you can have 3 very different prices for the same journey)
Planning a journey for the coming week I decided to purchase my ticket from trainline. The transaction ran smoothly and my tickets were booked at the price I chose from the list (I decided on the cheaper ones as they are all for the same journey)
When I came to the end of the transaction a message thanked me for my first purchase from trainline.com and if I clicked on the link I could as a thankyou claim £10 off my next journey.
So far so good – I clicked the link and the offer was a £15 discount voucher – well that seems even better.
The trouble is the offer was not for money off my next journey it was a random discount voucher – and all I had to do was fill in my details again to claim it. Plus if I did this I would join a club . . . → Read More: Trainline
By admin
We have all heard the old adage buyer beware – and since the dawn of the internet age this advice has never been more useful.
But if you are a seller on ebay then you also need to beware.
If you accept payment by cheque or credit card it’s easy to see that you may can lose out through rubber cheques or chargebacks.
But the trouble is paypal is not much if any better.
If a buyer decides to dispute the receipt of the goods or their quality paypal will almost always come down on their side and issue the refund. If a buyer does raise a claim then you are in most cases better off cutting your losses and paying them before paypal get involved because you will likely be wasting your time.
But hey at least you can give them negative feedback – er no your options are leave positive feedback, leave feedback later.
If you are selling on ebay any items for a value of £10+ a good policy is to always send by courier or signed for delivery – if the delivery is not signed for and the buyer disputes receipt you will not have a leg to stand on.
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By admin
A car is a major purchase, whether it’s new or used. But every purchase can have its problems and none more so than buying a previously-owned vehicle. It’s a market that’s wide open to scammers – statistics show that used car buyers have a one in three chance of buying a vehicle that’s subject to fraud. But with some care you can avoid them and find the car of your dreams.
The Things Scammers Do
Selling a car that’s been repaired after an accident. The frame might be bent then re-straightened, or any number of faults could be covered. Obviously, they’re not about to tell you – they simply want to sell the car. Buy it and you could be riding a death trap.
Selling stolen vehicles. Only two-thirds of cars stolen each year are recovered. Many stolen cars are re-sold. If you’ve bought one and the police find it, they’ll take it. In theory you can pursue the seller for your money – but what are the odds of finding him?
Selling a car that’s not paid for yet. If you knew about the debt, then the finance company can take the car from you. You can keep it if you didn’t know – but how do you prove it?
How to Avoid the Scam
Make . . . → Read More: Used Car Scam
By admin
Nothing new here – this time it’s a message on my mobile phone!
FREEMSG: Our records indicate you may be entitled to 3750 pounds for the Accident you had. To claim for free reply with YES to this msg. To opt out text STOP.
I haven’t had an accident – theres a suprise. The trouble is they will send this to a million people and in today’s Personal Injury landscape you can bet your ass at least 500,000 will be waiting to hear from some no win no fee solicitor.
I hate these text scams because it means that somewhere my name is on a muglist and someone somewhere saw fit to add me to that list.
It also gets me angry because these guys can charge you for texts you receive. The FREEMSG does not do much to make things better – of course it should be free why on earth would I pay to receive a text that I did not want that is trying to scam me?
Any reasonably legit text marketer will also give you the option to Text STOP at any time which is fine. This text was completely unsolicited however so why I should waste a text and confirm I read the thing in the 1st place I don’t know.
SHARE . . . → Read More: You may be entitled to some monies
By admin
This one is particularly sneaky text message I got a few months back:
You were charged in June for the Wappid ringtone service in error and are due a refund. Please call us on 0800 0319117 free from a landline to arrange refund
If this was legit then you would expect the Wappid ringtone service to exist – type it in Google and you only get a few hits, all people complaining about this unwanted text. This is most certainly a scam and a sly one at that.
Don’t be fooled by an 0800 number which is always free. Once you call this number you will be redirected to a premium rate number and there is no saying what this may end up costing you.
This is particularly nasty as some people may not want to respond to an unsolicited text message but feel that they have been charged in error, and the fact a large number of people will walk in to the 0800 trap makes it particularly nasty.
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By admin
This is the biggest scam I have ever fallen for in my entire life. In fact I realised this was a scam about 6 months after I bought in to it, and at that point I wanted to start a website, generate traffic, optimise it purely to tell everyone what a bunch of ****s these are.
How ironic that the very person that they made angry by ripping them off is now in fact the same person who is writing about them on the internets.
I got what I thought was a good deal from the Car Shop – one of those big car supermarkets. I don’t have a problem with the Car Shop in general I thought that their salesman was actually very honest and pleasant and I found their customer service staff to be polite and reasonablw when I since called them to give them some crap. Shame they mis-sold the hell out of a warranty thats not worth the paper it’s written on!
Once I had picked my car and negotiated what I felt was a good discount it was in to the office to sign the papers. (unexpected being my first car purchase but this is where the real selling took place) We negotiated the finance deal – and I . . . → Read More: The Warranty Group
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