Package deliveries have grown exponentially in the last ten years thanks to the boom in online shopping, speedy home delivery, and many other reasons. Unfortunately, so has the concept of the package delivery scam – which affects business owners and the average buyer alike. These scammers are using the increase in package deliveries as an opportunity to steal the recipient’s information. We’ll show you how below.
What is the Package Delivery Scam?
The business package delivery scam is especially common during heavy delivery times of year such as Christmas, Mother’s Day, even Amazon Prime Day. For example, FedEx alone reports getting 125 million package tracking requests PER DAY. With all of this volume, it can be easy to forget what you ordered and when you ordered it. Scammers are counting on it.
You or your business will get a phone call claiming to be a delivery service saying they had trouble delivering a package to your location. They will then request information, including personal and financial information. The scammers may even use the name of a worker, accountant, family member, etc. They will almost certainly ask for the payment method you used to buy the item such as the credit card, checking account, debit card, or bank account.
How the Package Delivery Scam Works
With this information, these scammers are likely to successfully pull off stealing your identity. They can make purchases in your business’s name, open accounts in your name, and any other number of illegal activities. This package delivery scam also comes in email form as well, especially if your business has its emails listed online. In fact, we get a couple of these emails per week that are titled something like “unable to deliver your package.”
How to Spot a Package Delivery Scam
Package delivery scams can be lucrative when targeting businesses, especially because not everyone knows about each delivery. These scams are more and more appearing as unsolicited phone calls to your business, where a legitimate package delivery service would normally leave a note. Below, we have tips on how to spot the scam.
- Talk to your workers. Let them know to never give sensitive information over the phone.
- Instruct them to take a message when discussing packages over the phone. Chances are the phone number they leave will have nothing to do with a legitimate delivery service.
- Have one person or department be responsible for all deliveries including what was ordered, from what store, expected delivery time, etc.
- Use the seller’s package tracking information, as most of them utilize them now. This can confirm if your package is indeed stuck in delivery limbo.
- You know it’s a scam if you didn’t order anything.
We recommend copying and pasting the phone number of a suspected scam into a search engine. You may be surprised to see the results come from scam spotting websites.
Not Every Package Delivery Service is a Scam
Remember that you may be contacted by a seller or delivery service in regards to your order. This will usually come in the form of an official email from their url. For example, when we have issues with an Amazon order, the email we correspond with ALWAYS has an “amazon.com” at the end.
Read more on this scam on Lifewire .
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