It’s about time that online merchants (credit card processing systems) start doing more to protect consumers and small businesses from fraudulent card users. We’ve initiated their fraud protections, but we still get hit almost every day. Every time a fraudulent card user purchases something from our company, we get the funds, then the client issues a chargeback (which costs us the $25 chargeback fee plus the processing fees that the company charges to erroneously give us the funds).
Categorized | BAD BUSINESS, Scams
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November 8th, 2010 at 10:02 am
DEER PARK AUTO SALES, Deer Park Tx — LOTTERY SCAM
Purported “winning ticket” they mailed me clearly showed all numbers to be winning match.
Twenty-five grand, with no hidden conditions, substitutions or exclusions appear.
Odds claimed to be about ONE in a half-million.
As I was being led to the manager for verification, I offered my photo ID, which the mail-out said I would need. A salesman acted shocked and said, “Photo ID? We’re not the police!”
I handed the manager my mail-out and ticket, but he did not appear in any way to register one bit of surprise that I could actually be “THE” ONE in a half-miilion, nor did he respond to my invitation to find anything wrong with the “winning” ticket. Quite the contrary. He appeared to have seen it all before.
I then asked the manager if the odds of “one” meant that there could be only ONE winner, and he said yes. Then I asked if it specifically meant that there could be only ONE such “winning ticket printed, and he nodded repeatedly and emphatically as if “yes.”
I knew the slimeball was lying, because I had already seen another “winning” ticket just like mine, minutes earlier in another room.
He added that the “winner” wouldn’t be announced until the last day (Monday, November 1) of the event, and that I should call then to find out “if” I had won.
But that would never happen. In the final hour of the scam event, as well as afterward, I would hear the same recording tell me that my prize had been “reserved” and that I should proceed to the event during special hours to “claim” my prize. I could enter a confirmation number other than my own and hear the same recording.
Another part of the scam was what appeared to be a car key, taped onto the mail-out. If the key fit some prize vehicle on the lot, I would supposedly win that wihicle. But the manager never let me try the key, saying that it wasn’t even a real key. He pulled it from the mail-out, bent it up and broke it right before my eyes. Like my “winning” ticket, it was to be the second such busted key I had already seen there that day.
The manager kept my “winning” ticket and mail-out, so if I were to actually win the ersatz “lottery,” I suppose he would pocket the loot for himself because he had kept all the evidence.
But I assured the con artist that I fully intended to buy a car from him next week, as soon as the 25 G cleared my bank.
How can these people keep getting away with such blatant lying deceptive scams? Is this fraud a violation of postal regs? Don’t we pay taxes for some basic consumer protections and a little truth in advertising?