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Enjoying a Safe Festive Season

Bill Cunningham has been a Scam Champion for Trading Standards for eight years and has spent a lot of time throughout Surrey delivering presentations about scams for community groups and companies. For many, Bill has alerted them just in time or made them hesitate against acting when contacted out of the blue.

Bill kindly writes regular articles for Voluntary Support on scammers and what to be aware of. This month, he’s looking ahead to the festive season and the scams to be aware of at this time.

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With the festive season upon us, it’s important to bear in mind our use of parcel delivery organisations this Christmas for we can’t always rely on Santa to deliver our presents!

Over the festive season, it’s likely that we may receive messages claiming to be from well-known delivery companies. This could be to state that their driver could not deliver the parcel as we weren’t in at the time and/or there was no safe space to leave it. We’ll get instructions on how to re-arrange the delivery which could involve us clicking a link which could lead to a request for a small payment.

If we follow that con to pay the sender then soon afterwards we’ll get a phone call claiming to be from our bank. The caller will say they have noted us paying a known scammer and there’s every chance that our account could be cleaned out. So we’ll have to, with the caller’s help, set up a safe account and move our money into that!

We know by now that we never believe a call out of the blue claiming to be the bank. If we follow the scam caller’s advice then our money ends up in their account. Alternatively, after receipt of our banking details, the scammer may take out a loan in our name and head off with a bundle of notes. We cannot influence a white Christmas but we can take steps to avoid a black one.

It’s also crucial to know who we are buying from and to ensure that we are buying authentic products from a reliable source. We must be aware, when buying products on online marketplaces, that the products aren’t illegal, unsafe, or even dangerous. Knowledge about the seller is a must-have. We should also be suspicious if a seller suggests you move off the platform in question, do a deal direct and/or pay via the PayPal Friends & Family option. For in doing so, we’d be shifting away from the protection for our transaction.

When we receive parcels on time, with contents as we ordered and the quality as expected, then we can relax. It’s when the parcel doesn’t arrive that we have to take action. To remind the seller directly that the responsibility is theirs to sort out any issues if the parcel does not arrive at the location specified. We ask for a re-delivery or refund.

If we have agreed to a parcel being delivered to our porch or to a neighbour, then beware, for if there’s proof of delivery shown to us and the parcel then vanishes, the problem does not sit with the seller. Parcel delivery going wrong is a common occurrence and it points to us having to buy carefully and read the small print.

For the last few years, around this time of the year, the delivery experiences of more than 10 million people has generally been more and the resolution to these issues can be a real challenge. The Citizen’s Advice website provides sample communications for us to follow if it all goes sour.

It’s important to be aware of scams linked to parcel deliveries. Scams linked to parcel deliveries, banking and online shopping came top in 2023. As of 21 November 2024, almost 15 million people experienced a problem with a parcel delivery in the last month.