Am I being scammed?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Saturday I ordered a new taillight for my Honda Civic on line. Order went through okay, got a confirmation e-mail, everything seemed fine.

Today, I get a call from a woman with such a thick accent I can barely understand her. It seems the address they have for shipping does not match my credit card. I ask her what address they had, and they had everything correct except for the zip code, which had two numbers transposed.

I gave her the correct zip code, and she said in order to continue processing my order, I would need to confirm my credit card number and expiration date. Oh, no, you don’t, I thought, and told her I would not do that over the phone (she called me, remember) and that she needed to send me an e-mail. She said she had sent me an e-mail and I could reply to that.

I then went online to check my confirmation e-mail. They had the correct address, down to the zip code. I then called the 800 number included in the e-mail and told them I was concerned someone had hacked into their website.

The first guy couldn’t help me (for some reason, my confirmation number wasn’t coming up) and transferred me to someone else. He said 1)Someone had called because the zip code didn’t match and 2)When I had ordered online it had gone into the “old” system. Remember, I ordered two days ago. When I asked why it matched in the confirmation e-mail, he couldn’t answer that. He asked me to “trust” them and asked for my credit card number again.

My hinky sense was tingling, so I said I was very uncomfortable with the whole thing and told him to cancel the order.

I could see how if they had to transfer info from an “old” system to a new system they might have transposed a couple of numbers in the zip code, but I just found the whole thing unsettling, especially when I called the 800# and they didn’t seem to at first have a record of the order, then secondly not be able to explain why the zip code is correct in the order confirmation but not in their system.

Am I being paranoid?

2

Actually, I can’t see how it could have happened that way. Presumably the transfer would be electronic and the data wouldn’t change – except for glitches, which are unlikely to just transpose a number.

3

Oh yeah? And what possible reason could there be for them to need this? They called you, so presumably they knew they had the right customer. And if for some reason further verification was needed, it wouldn’t require the whole card number and expiration date.

Maybe you are being paranoid, but I smell the same rat you did.

4

Yes. But that doesn’t mean someone isn’t trying to run a scam on you. There are many ways for your information to be compromised online so a healthy sense of paranioa is a good thing. You did the right thing by having them cancel it. Whenever I’m not dealing with a big player online (Amazon) I try to find a vendor that offers the option of accepting payment through PayPal.

5

I think you were right to be suspicious. I also think it was a mistake to call the number from the email they sent you. Emails are easy to spoof, and they could have simply given you a fake number to call. As a general rule of thumb, I’d never click on a link or call a number given to me in an email claiming to be from a business I share financial data with. It’s safer to always go directly to the website via bookmark, Google or typing in the address.

I’m fairly paranoid about phone or email solicitations for personal or financial info, and I think it’s generally a good idea to be. Better safe than sorry.

6

If they ask you for the card number again you can always just tell them to repeat the number they have and you will confirm if it is correct. It does sound fishy the way you describe it. I don’t think you were being paranoid at all.
You might consider a local “U-pull it” place for your taillight, it should be pretty cheap, a lot less than at the dealership and probably cheaper than online or at a parts store.

7

Going to their website, (not from the e-mail, but typing it into the brower) I can put in my tracking number and my order does come up.

This just seems so odd. Ivylad has the site bookmarked on the home computer…I’m going to call tonight.

8

I received an official-looking e-mail from the bank that issued one of my credit cards. It really seemed to be from that bank. Similar e-mail address, same logos in the message. Wanted me to verify my account info, including the card numbers. Instead, I called the bank, which is in the US. They said that was a scam that they had been alerted to already but thanks for reporting it. They emphasized that they would never contact me by e-mail asking for such info.

I think you might be being scammed.

9

Depending on how they process their CC’s they may need to rerun the transaction, many systems do not save the full CC number and would require a new entry of the full number to reprocess it. This is a security feature to prevent theft of stored card numbers.

Its quite possible this was a legit call, if anything I would suspect a typo on the OP’s part during order entry to be the problem since such orders are normally processed totally by computer. Garbage in garbage out.

If you are that worried call them up and cencel the order then start over from scratch.

10

Be sure to double check that the number you found in the email you received matches the telephone number in their website. If it doesn’t, I really smell a rat.

11

No GIGO here. My address is correct in the confirmation e-mail, down to the zip code. When the woman called me she had the address correct, but the zip code had the last two numbers transposed.

I suppose if this is a scam, it’s a small enough error that someone might think, “Oh, I mistyped. Sure, let me read off my credit card number to you.”

12

This sounds well dodgy to me. And, as others have noted, I’d double-check the 800 number. In point of fact, I’d draw enough cash to get by and cancel the card. Just in case.

13

I went to the site straight from Ivylad’s bookmark. I finally got someone on the phone and it seems that yes, somehow in their system the last two numbers of the zip code was transposed, even though it is correct on the order confirmation. How that happened no one can answer. They do show the order was canceled. When I told her I thought I was being scammed because the first person who called me asked for my credit card number, she seemed surprised that she would ask for that info. The zip code was correct when I called this last time.

I told the peon that I felt this whole thing was handled very unprofessionally and that I would wait a couple of weeks to make sure my bank account wasn’t cleaned out, then try again. I still need that taillight and they are the cheapest we’ve found so far.

All in all, I don’t think they were trying to pull a fast one, but how can the zip code be wrong in their system but be correct on the order confirmation? :confused:

14

Some programmer substringed the zip+4 part incorrectly.

15

I second this, some of these places can “pull it” themselves and ship to you. This is how we got a new heat/AC control panel for the '89 Dodge that we owned.

16

Like a junkyard? That’s a thought…

17

Absolutely. There must be many cars just like yours lying around with a blown engine but perfectly working taillights.

18

depends which “system” sent the order confirmation

speaking as a coder i can understand how - if they are transitioning (badly) between two systems (where they haven’t set up the payment processing on the new one yet) - that would happen:

  1. order placed in new system
  2. confirmation automatically sent from new system
  3. order manually transposed into old system (when mistake is made)
  4. order doesn’t process

That doesn’t mean that you were wrong not to take the approach you did though - better safe than sorry.