BE WARY of an e-mail that may come to you from a "W I N S", and/or a "AGENT BEN ANDREW", and/or a "LIVE COURIER DELIVERY SERVICE" as the sender, claiming that your e-mail address has been randomly selected in a UK Promo draw. Especially if you never entered into one or had any business with anything located overseas.
I received such an e-mail, but because I had made so many purchases from the various Amazon merchant sites worldwide (especially amazon.co.uk), as well as from sellers in the UK thru eBay, I didn't automatically dismiss it and junk it, thinking perhaps my addy did somehow get entered onto some kind of mailing list.
It claimed that my e-mail address was randomly drawn in a promotional lottery in the UK, and it provided me with my "lucky numbers" as well as a serial number, saying that I needed to provide personal details, along with these numbers, to claim my 1, 000, 000 GBP prize.
The personal details did NOT include requests for my social insurance number or any bank account or credit card numbers, just my name, address, age, occupation, and other stuff that I was comfortable with sharing, as I saw no way they could really misuse it that could come back to harm me any.
So out of curiosity, I returned an e-mail with all the requested info. I then received another e-mail with a phone number in the UK to call. I called. I was then told I would be receiving yet another e-mail, this time from a courier service that would have instructions on how I go about claiming my big "winnings".
And there it was ; the big catch...
This "courier" service stated in their e-mail that they wanted me to send them in excess of $1000 USD to cover "courier costs" as well as insurance and other fees.
Needless to say I refused to send them one red cent. I told them to take any fees out of my winnings, lol. I received another phone call, from thsi courier outfit, and when I again said I was not sending any money, they got very agitated and almost seemed to resort to passive-aggressive bully tactics, trying to scare me, intimidate me, and humiliate me (telling me I "did not understand" that these fees were necessary, etc).
And if all of this was not a clue enough, further suspicion was aroused by the fact that the phone calls all had horrible connections (consitent dropouts throughout the call made it hard to hear a complete word, much less a sentence), and for a business situated in the UK, those "Brits" had the THICKEST ASIAN and EAST INDIAN / ARABIC accents I've ever heard!
Even if the line connection was crystal clear, I still would have been left struggling to understand what they were tyring to say to me from their incredibly poor command of the English language.
I finally did my own "bullying" and told them that if I indeed won anything, then MAIL it in a plain manila envelope directly to me, and not use and over-priced couriers, as well that insurance was not necessary. And if they could not or would not comply, then they could go and shove it up their... well, I made myself explicitly clear.
So even though I was not taken in by this scam, I hope this warning will arm others to not be taken in either.
If I knew how to have these people investiagted, I would have taken such steps.
Oh, and would you believe it - they tried contacting me again, as if the first time around never happened. I again stated my terms perfectly clear ; pay up or bugger off.
Stay viligant, folks.
WTW
Calgary, Alberta
Canada
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