Scammers Don’t Care Who They Screw Over

We are a small independent bookshop in a rather depressed UK city. With the rise of Internet shopping, we started selling books online a few years ago. We have only really had one bad customer.

We sent the book to this customer, and the following day we got an email from her along the lines of:

Customer: “I want a refund. Your delivery driver didn’t deliver the book after I paid for redelivery.”

That was odd. Not only did we send the book via Royal Mail, not a private service, but no delivery service charges for redelivery. I wasn’t in the shop at the time, but a worker was, and he called me, quite confused. I was equally confused.

Then, the penny dropped. There’s a scam where people send emails or text messages to people with the subject “redelivery of your parcel.” Clicking on the link, the victim is prompted to pay a redelivery charge. Because we were the last business she had ordered something from online, she thought the email was to do with her order from us.

By this time, we had received another email from her.

Customer: “I DEMAND A REFUND! YOUR DRIVER SCAMMED ME!”

I wrote politely back explaining that this had nothing to do with us at all, and having looked at our records and the date the book had been sent off, there was no way it could have reached her yet. I explained the scam, linking to a police website about it, and advised that she needed to cancel the card that she had used, as there was a possibility the scammer now had her card details and could use them to make purchases online.

She still demanded a refund from [Online Marketplace], which we gave. But seriously, the issue had nothing to do with us!