May 7, 2010

Hello! My name is Sucker!

Have you ever gotten this email....

Hello,
I would like to order 1500 of your item "x". I'll pay by credit card. Here is my shippers information. Contact them to find out shipping costs. 

Thank you,
Customer

Well, I got an email like this and having been around the block at least once in my life immediately had a red flag go up. I decided to play along. Ok. An oder of that many would weigh 45 pounds, check with your shipper. I find it interesting that the price quote they got from a shipper that I've never heard of and does not come up on any google search is going to charge them $3,620 to ship to New Zealand. Wow. That's interesting considering you could buy yourself a round trip ticket for that amount and have a heck of a vacation to boot while hand delivering the goods. I guess I'm in the wrong line of work. 3,620? Is that in yen or dollars? Maybe rupees? I sent them an email letting them know that I only ship with USPS, UPS or FedEx. I got a quote from USPS for under $400 and that would take 3 days and be fully insured. I can't wait to see what happens next....

P.S. Have a great weekend!

2 comments:

Pegs said...

We had a blanket email similar to that one sent to everyone at my office a few months ago...

I think the idea behind it is the scammer is also 'running' the shipping company, so if you give your credit card # for shipping, they take that money/info and run.

Gaea said...

Hi Pegs,
I found a similar story when I googled the body of the email. It was a scam that happened to a bakery who got an email order for $1500 in wedding cakes to ship to Canada from the US. I told this person that I didn't deal with shipping companies that I've never heard of and that I would ship it to them via USPS and they could forward it to their "orphanage" how ever they like. I've not heard back. Thanks for the tip!