Have you ever been scammed?

Once. Sounds silly now but those scam banking emails. 2002, had just signed up to online banking. First ever scam email I got was for my bank. If it had come from any other bank I probably would have known it was dodgy, but I was 20 and it was early days of internet banking.

Bank just refunded me £2000. That wouldn’t happen now.

BTW, talking of scammers, I thoroughly recommend the new film Thelma.

 
I paid £25 for an EHIC card when they're free. I stupidly clicked on a third party site, and paid for them to apply for it for me.

Had a couple of dodgy charges on my cards which had to be cancelled and reversed but I couldn't tell you the details or how they happened.
 
I still can't believe someone befriended me and got a deposit from me for a new place to move into and I was stood outside with my bags before I realised I'd been scammed :( He also talked me into allowing him to use my Zip Car account and ran up charges of £480 in a single night :(
 
Yes I'm starting to think Selena Gomez isn't going to send me those free Le Creusets :(
 
Oh, and I also got scammed a couple of months ago through paying one nice for a serviced apartment that was advertised on Agoda for £89. It wasn't made clear in the advert that a deposit would be due and I didn't have the money to cover that. I spoke to a lady at the firm and she said it wouldn't be a problem and would refund me. Then the company went back on their word and would not co-operate. I requested an audio copy of the call (as all calls were recorded) but my requests were ignored time and time again. Tried to dispute through my bank but to no avail.

That one really pissed me off.
 
Tisch said:
I paid £25 for an EHIC card when they're free. I stupidly clicked on a third party site, and paid for them to apply for it for me.
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I almost did this recently, I can't remember what it was for - I think getting a replacement driving license or something. Clicked on a sponsored link and the entire user journey made it look like you were going through the official channels.

How are these things legal? The admin applying yourself is exactly the same as the admin for a third party.
 
When I was in Berlin a few years ago, my friend and I didn’t pay for the metro because there wasn’t anything to scan so we thought we could get away with it. 2 police officers checked our tickets, and when we didn’t have them, they said we either had to give them 50 euros or they would have to take our passports. We took the subway to another station to go to an atm and took out the money. I thought they were real police, but they probably weren’t.
 
I realize that story did not make me look great…
 
Not directly a scam but when I was 21 I booked a trip to Turkey with 3 friends but it was the year they had a war or something and the foreign office advised people not to go. We were still going to, but 2 of the people pulled out and got their money back (the government protected everyone's refunds IIRC) so I was a bit slow in following up. But by the time I got round to it the travel company we booked through (some dodgy back alley outfit somewhere in London when I wasn't living there, all done over the phone) just refused to return calls or kept me on hold or fobbed me off until it past the cutoff. I was so pissed off purely on principle.

I'm not sure if those dodgy independent holiday firms even exist any more? Just a telephone number in someone's house. It was back in the days of teletext, I'm sure loads of dodgy shit went on then.

Anyway I've hated travel agents ever since then and won't ever use them. Except booking.com I suppose.
 
My debit card was cloned about fifteen years ago and I only discovered when I tried to pay the vet bill and my card was declined. Came home and looked on interweb banking and the bastards had had a massive party at a hotel in Birmingham (or it may have been Bristol - hazy memory) the previous weekend, over seven grand of charges. My bank were lovely and put all the money back in that day then when Visa refunded the charges the bank took them out again. The thing that rubbed salt in the wounds was when all of the hotel bills arrived at my house, in somebody else's name but my address, and we could see just how much alcohol they'd purchased in their five rooms.
 
Had a card cloned once and also someone nicked one while it was in the post to me and spent a load in a MODEL SHOP in COLCHESTER or something

Not sure those count as scams though. Just straight up FRAUD
 
If someone called me and said they were from my bank, I'd probably fall for it.
 
I got a bank fraud thing because someone charged my card to a website called “hot pussy .com” back in the early 2000s. I finally had to scream at the bank lady IM A FAG I SUCK DICK for her to realize it wasn’t me and get the charges reversed. It was like $200 so I hope they had a good time lol
 
I once walked in on Mr Jiva sending his card details to one of those Royal Mail text scams. I was too late to stop him but we managed to cancel the card before any damage was done.
 
Joseph said:
I got a bank fraud thing because someone charged my card to a website called “hot pussy .com” back in the early 2000s. I finally had to scream at the bank lady IM A FAG I SUCK DICK for her to realize it wasn’t me and get the charges reversed. It was like $200 so I hope they had a good time lol
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Don’t those websites usually use an innocuous name on the credit card statement so that if your significant other checks the bill it isn’t obvious what you’ve been up to? Or so a friend told me.
 
They probably do now. This was like 2001 or 2002. That’s why when I got my statement from the bank I was like WHAT :D
 
I didn’t have my card cloned, but when I moved out of a flat, when changing my address in branch, the bank asked to update my middle initial to my full name. That triggered a new card to be sent before they updated the address. So a new debit card was sent to my old address and the new tenants must have tried to book a holiday.
 
I had my card details nicked once but they only spent it on a relatively cheap CAR PARKING TICKET in LONDON.
 
I've probably been scammed by people saying they're 50 cents short from buying a ticket, or 1 euro short from buying sth to eat etc. But nothing more serious or the kind that would made me feel bad inside afterwards. I felt really bad once though for Mr. Bay who was approached on the street by someone selling an iphone with no charger for 50 Euros and Mr. Bay thought it was a bargain and bought it for me:nononono:As you may have already guessed it was a mockup, and when I told him that no charger will be able to power it cause it ain't real he felt bad. I tried to console him thanking him anyways cause it's the thought that counts and offered to pay back what he paid for it to undo his sad but he wouldn't take it.
 
funky said:
Anyway I've hated travel agents ever since then and won't ever use them. Except booking.com I suppose.
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Booking is the worst scam, we had two charges on company credit card from them this year, tried to contact them to understand what the charges were for, no visible customer care email/phone any more on their website, the only way you can contact them is by filing in your reservation number (that we obviously don't know hence we were trying to contact them). Managed to send them an email via unorthodox searching only to end up from one AI response to another completely ignoring what am saying and asking me the reservation number over and over.
 
Nancy said:
If someone called me and said they were from my bank, I'd probably fall for it.
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About two years ago I received a phone call from my lifelong bank regarding a supposed online purchase from a certain department store that wasn't going through, they were trying to purchase a big ass TV for a ridiculous price so they just wanted to confirm if it was me. They had all my detailed information for me to believe it was truly them, they also had information on some of my direct family members so I fell for it.
Anyway they asked if I could take another phone call on my landline while I had to go into my bank app, bastards somehow hacked my app and managed to transfer some money to God knows who; I will always be thankful that account was just a backup and I didn't keep a lot in there, but still :( 🤡
 
And don't get me started on booking's car rental associate, we've prepaid for a car booking abroad that the car rental never gave us, so ultimately we had to book with some other car rental to move around. After complaining to booking, they asked for us to wait until the car never given rental period was over :nononono: before they could handle our complaint. To top it all they ultimately only refunded their own profit from what that car rental charged us.
 
RJN said:
When I was in Berlin a few years ago, my friend and I didn’t pay for the metro because there wasn’t anything to scan so we thought we could get away with it. 2 police officers checked our tickets, and when we didn’t have them, they said we either had to give them 50 euros or they would have to take our passports. We took the subway to another station to go to an atm and took out the money. I thought they were real police, but they probably weren’t.
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oh love they ABSOLUTELY WERE real police. the police are very active on the u-bahn and s-bahn every day and it's HIGH THEATRE when they catch someone (it happened to me at least twice). everybody stops to watch. and they're sadistic fucks so there's no getting around it. reading this has reactivated some old trauma...
 
Marina Salty said:
Booking is the worst scam, we had two charges on company credit card from them this year, tried to contact them to understand what the charges were for, no visible customer care email/phone any more on their website, the only way you can contact them is by filing in your reservation number (that we obviously don't know hence we were trying to contact them). Managed to send them an email via unorthodox searching only to end up from one AI response to another completely ignoring what am saying and asking me the reservation number over and over.
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shouldn't you have been contacting your credit card provider? what can Booking do about it if a scammer has your credit card details?
 
Jark said:
shouldn't you have been contacting your credit card provider? what can Booking do about it if a scammer has your credit card details?
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The bank only knows who took the money, in this case booking. It's for booking to reply what it was bought with the money but they have made it impossible to answer what the charges were for. Hiding and refusing communication.
 
I have to pay a massive service charge on my flat every year. That certainly feels like a scam.
 
A work card got scammed a couple of years ago the night after staying in a fairly dodgy DAY’S INN.

Still makes me laugh to this day that the phone call was a human who phoned me in Fareham to say “oh hello Sheena, it’s NatWest. Have you just tried to spend £2750 in a hat shop in Bolivia?” :D
 
My friend and I were approached tonight by someone trying to flog a box of wine they’d just nicked. :D Honestly I might have gone for it if he hadn’t laughed them away.
 
Strange but also very Tetris-coded one for me. I got scammed on Instagram having entered one of many competitions that tattoo artists run on there to win a tattoo. I got a message on IG from an account that looked like the artist’s telling me that I had won, and asking me to put a deposit down within the next hour or something to claim the win. I feel like in normal circumstances i’d have thought this was sus, but i’d just finished arrived at th accommodation I was staying at for a friend’s wedding following a long day travelling up so was a bit distracted and tired. Basically I put in my card details and then then next page was a subscription for some “video streaming site” that I was now signed up to for £60 a month or something stupid. Luckily it clicked then that i’d been had and phoned my bank.

The whole tattoo competition scam is seemingly quite common - the account that messaged me was one that was set up to duplicate the artist’s - same profile pic, almost identical handle, the same most recent ten pictures… I messaged the real account who was running the actual competition when it happened to tell them and the artist’s reply was actually a bit exasperated and was like “I know… this happens all the time, stop bothering me.” And sure enough, anytime I see tattoo artists running competitions now there is always a bit in the post saying “Winners will be announced on this page only, ignore any DMs saying you’ve won, report the account if you’re contacted (and don’t message me!)”
 
Tetris-Rock said:
Strange but also very Tetris-coded one for me. I got scammed on Instagram having entered one of many competitions that tattoo artists run on there to win a tattoo. I got a message on IG from an account that looked like the artist’s telling me that I had won, and asking me to put a deposit down within the next hour or something to claim the win. I feel like in normal circumstances i’d have thought this was sus, but i’d just finished arrived at th accommodation I was staying at for a friend’s wedding following a long day travelling up so was a bit distracted and tired. Basically I put in my card details and then then next page was a subscription for some “video streaming site” that I was now signed up to for £60 a month or something stupid. Luckily it clicked then that i’d been had and phoned my bank.
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That's along the same lines as me and the PREMIER INN PILLOWS :(
 
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