Have you ever been scammed?

[BigBrenda]

I was. I was very very naive and gave someone my bank card to use to get lunch.
they then took their gf around Westfield and took out 4 phone contracts for the latest iPhone that was out. Not sure what one it would of been maybe the 5?.
Didn’t know nothing about it. Until a week later when my mum phoned me fuming asking what all these letters for phones was about.
I called the police and the phone companies and they just didn’t care or pursuit. Total to pay was around £2.5K. I never paid it and thank god it’s all fell off my credit report now never to be seen again. But yeah bit stupid of me. Was a friend I’d known for a long time.

 

[candyland_]

When I was about 16 someone stopped me in Newcastle and wouldn’t let me leave until I had gave them £50 for a 20% discount voucher for their hair salon.

From that day on I have never stopped to speak to any cold steer caller or charity worker, I don’t care how rude I appear they can all get fucked. All they want is money.

I’ve had the sofa scam too twice. They both had an identical story of how they were disabled and couldn’t arrange it themselves. I gave it away for free in the end.

 

[Scorpihoe]

I sold something on gumtree and the guy transferred me the money over PayPal. After I sent out the item to him, he claimed the money back. I was so pissed, I used his email to track down his Instagram (he was just a teenager lol), found his mum and sister and threatened to tell them. He got so scared and transferred the money back via friends and family

 

[Melian]

I had an email from the HMRC, it was very well put together and realistic, saying I was due a refund. I reported it to Action Fraud, but it was very convincing.

I've had a few from HMRC that are quite clearly scams - because February 30th doesn't exist!

 

[Babyyoda88]

Someone tried to scam me.
Last year I posted my couch for sale on eBay. I had someone come up as interested and they said they were going to send a delivery firm round to pick the couch up etc and could they have our address.

all seemed above board to begin with however I noticed even between messages they seemed a bit abrupt.

the next thing they said they would pay me the couch price and their quoted pick up price so they would transfer 1500 into my PayPal account. They then said with the £500 they’ve given me for pick up that I would arrange the pick up and pay with that money (would have been a scam account). It all seemed not right.

They sent me a bogus PayPal email which looked like they had transferred the money into my PayPal. I could tell it was a fake and checked my PayPal which confirmed no money had been added.

I told them I knew it was a scam and blocked them.

luckily I was dubious from the start and as it went along it was very apparent it wasn’t legit, but I can see how some people would be fooled by it.

 

[Rodneytrotter]

I had my PayPal hacked by someone who used it to pay for something (about £400 worth) but PayPal sorted it out quickly for me. It was still stressful though

Also just remembered when I tried to start a business about 12 years ago I had a local police charity ask if I wanted to place an ad in their charity leaflet that would be posted to many houses. I said I'd be interested and then started to get threatening letters to pay for it. Turned out to be a scam .

 

[My2pWorth]

My friend saw her horse was up for sale on Gumtree. Turns out they had used her photos from Instagram and wanted 5k for a 15k horse. She messaged them pretending to be interested and they said to meet her in a totally different city with the cash and then they would take her to 'him'. Horse is a she, they clearly didn't have a clue about horses.

 

[Elles20]

Years ago I was walking to town for dinner one day and a man was running around in distress. He came up to me saying that he had a call from the hospital who said his pregnant wife had fallen and had to be rushed to A&E. His phone had died so couldn't call anyone and couldn't get an Uber. He asked if I could lend him money to get a black cab. He gave me his phone number and address so I could contact him later. Then I gave him some money.

I found out it was a scam very shortly after when he left and another guy came up to me to ask me whether he just asked for money. He said he did the same thing to him weeks before!

 

[sheleg]

I was scammed when I was living in China. Nothing too dramatic. A motorbike taxi driver asked if I would held him break a 100 yuan note for smaller change (worth about £10). I gave him 100 yuan in notes and coins, and took his 100 note. When I went to spend the note, it turned out to be fake. That was the last time I did anyone a money related favour!

 

[hol20x]

I’ve had phone calls from foreign men telling me my national insurance number will be suspended if I don’t pay HMRC £1,000 plus. Happy days, if it gets suspended I can’t pay tax.

 

[HowlOwl]

Couldn't you just imagine some people getting very scared and paying up?
It's horrible when I think of it tbh.
I think of my old dad who was sharp as a tack until he reached his mid 70s, if one of these scammers called him back then I could totally see him believing it.

We had to change my mum’s landline number because she was so vulnerable. These people are evil parasites.

 

[Kim Mild]

I think someone tried to scam me once. I'd recently moved and I phoned to change the address on my dog's microchip. The man who answered sounded a bit strange, we all know how people talk when we call a contact centre, and he didn't talk like that. He answered by asking for my visa or Mastercard number, not why I was calling. I started giving my number then I got then muddled when I was saying them , then I decided it sounded dodgy so I just hung up .I wrote and sent the company a cheque instead.

Someone I know got scammed into buying a holiday home that didn't exist . They were browsing for a property abroad and found some affordable apartments that were in the process of getting built. There was a website , and they kept getting photos of the progress. They actually went out and viewed the building site, but they couldn't go in for insurance reasons. It was a genuine property, but it all belonged to someone else , the whole website and all the paperwork she got was all a con . She paid a deposit and some installments , she was scammed out of a few thousand.

 

[Flowergirl123]

Couldn't you just imagine some people getting very scared and paying up?
It's horrible when I think of it tbh.
I think of my old dad who was sharp as a tack until he reached his mid 70s, if one of these scammers called him back then I could totally see him believing it.

I had a friend in the US who fell for this a few years ago - she was in her 30s at the time. When she told me the story, she was really embarrassed because she ended up paying them over $3,000 - it had all the classic hallmarks of a scam, threatening the police, being on the phone for hours to her, telling her to go to CVS and buy visa and Mastercard gift cards and read out the numbers to them.

I couldn’t believe she had fallen for it, but she said the phone call started legit, they sounded like they knew her situation and she was afraid of getting into trouble with the IRS. They kept on to her for hours and in the end, she paid up because she was so frightened. She knew after that it was a scam and reported the episode to the police but they couldn’t do anything and just advised her not to pay out again, they’d never come for her at her house for tax issues like the scammers said.

You’d be surprised how many people fall for things like this and then don’t share because they are embarrassed to have been fooled.

 

[Melian]

Someone tried.
They somehow got.my.debit card details and tried to order £75 of Deliveroo to an address in Southend.
The bank stopped it and called and asked if I was in Southend, I was Hull at the time.
They sent a new card.

Similar happened to me. Had no idea until my card got declined.

 

[MeeShellMahBell]

I had an email from the HMRC, it was very well put together and realistic, saying I was due a refund. I reported it to Action Fraud, but it was very convincing.

I get phone calls sometimes telling me that HMRC are sending the police after me.

The scammer on the other end really tries to milk it. "Unless you pay HMRC £2000 today the police will be sent. Now the police are on their way, I have alerted them."
I tell them I'm waiting for the cops, can't see them yet, I'll let you know when they arrive. They usually hang up eventually.

 

[Apple In My Pie]

I got nearly £300 taken from me after my Uber Eats account was hacked by someone in Canada, then a week later my mother’s card was also hit (it was linked to the account too, despite Uber eats insisting they’d removed all our details) and she lost £150. Managed to get it all back from the bank but to this day refuse to use Uber eats, they still haven’t deleted my details from their website after nearly a year.

I was. I was very very naive and gave someone my bank card to use to get lunch.
they then took their gf around Westfield and took out 4 phone contracts for the latest iPhone that was out. Not sure what one it would of been maybe the 5?.
Didn’t know nothing about it. Until a week later when my mum phoned me fuming asking what all these letters for phones was about.
I called the police and the phone companies and they just didn’t care or pursuit. Total to pay was around £2.5K. I never paid it and thank god it’s all fell off my credit report now never to be seen again. But yeah bit stupid of me. Was a friend I’d known for a long time.

That’s sickening that it was a friend

 

[MeeShellMahBell]

We also used to get those classic ‘we need to log onto your computer’ I like to keep them on the phone playing dim with my banana computer

When I had a landline I'd get that almost weekly.
I loved Messing with them.

I told.one guy the computer was in the other room and the land line was connected to the wall. So he'd tell me to do something and I'd have to go into the other room, do it, come back and tell him I'd done it... He put up with it for what seemed like ages..

 

[usefullyuseless]

A few weeks ago my father was out shopping. His debit card didn't work in one shop for some reason, don't know if it was a problem with the card or the machine but he was able to pay cash and went about his day.

Later that evening he got a text saying his card had been blocked and to log on to a website to input his details and reactivate the card. He stupidly clicked the link but thankfully his anti-virus software blocked the site and he got no further.

He called the bank who said there was no issue with his card, they didn't know why it hadn't worked earlier, they hadn't sent him a text (they never send texts) but to be safe they cancelled the card and issued a new one.

It absolutely sickens me to think he could have lost thousands if the scam had been successful. Please, please, please remind your family and friends to never, ever, ever click on links in text messages.

 

[JoeBloggs]

I had fraud on my credit card a few weeks ago, Amazon Kindle subscription or something. It was cancelled and refunded and I got a new card. The day my card arrived it happened again but on my husbands card. He has never even taken his card off the paper it was sent on let alone used it, but I guess they were linked but scary how they got the details. My mum used to work for a bank and was convinced it was an inside job.

 

[HowlOwl]

I had an email from the HMRC, it was very well put together and realistic, saying I was due a refund. I reported it to Action Fraud, but it was very convincing.