PSA: Newish Scams

[pete]

Especially for folks that use ebay or PayPal often.

Bad guy signs up for a REAL PayPal account. Bad guy sends you a REAL invoice. There's a notes field in the invoice that says something like, "If you dispute these charges, call us at 1-800-SCAM." The fun update I've seen is when the invoice mentions a REAL ebay ad.

The scam where just some random bad guy sends you an invoice for your Norton 360 account needs to be renewed or says that someone has bought 50 new iPads using your credit card has been around for several months.

Also, if you get an e-mail from someone you even think might be a bad guy, don't call the number in the e-mail. Call an official number. As an example, if you get a scam e-mail from Apple, go to Apple.com and look for support phone numbers.

 

[Carl H.]

I recently had reason to contact PayPal customer service regarding a couple issues I was having. The first person I contacted was essentially a receptionist for lack of a better description. She asked me what she could do for me and I told her I had 2 things that I needed assistance with. The first was the false invoice scam. I had already deleted it that morning, but I asked her about it and she said to just delete it, as anyone can send an invoice for anything to anyone and since I didn't do business with the person just flag the email with the provider and delete. All in all she was charming and efficient.

Then I explained the other reason I was calling and she forwarded me to the appropriate person. After getting the run around for 1/2 hour and saying I couldn't do anything about the situation except pay their fees for doing nothing. I requested his supervisor and he connected me without much fuss. His supervisor was a REAL piece of work. He was abrasive, condescending and abusive. When I asked to speak to his supervisor he said he was the supervisor. After 5 minutes of him declaring what I wanted couldn't be done and that HE was the supervisor he put me on hold multiple times. After about 25 minutes on hold I reached his supervisor.

This supervisor fixed the situation in under 3 minutes and was a gem.

Sorry about wasting your time with my 2nd issue of that day, guess I just needed to vent.