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Saturday, November 28, 2009

Black Friday Scam prevention tip

A few more days before black Friday and you know everyone has some sort of plan on what to buy.

Lets talk about gift cards. You know the plastic card that has magic money you can used for that particular store. Word on the cyberstreet is when you used one of these cards at an automatic cash machine, some dishonest cash tellers are pocketing some of your earnings.

If your asking how do they do this. Follow me on this. Lets pick on Home Depot as an example.

Lets say you just bought yourself a cool looking hammer for 20 dollars and your gift card has a total of
50 dollars. So doing the math after taxes you have around 28 dollars left. So you go to this automated line
where you swipe your the hammer on the scanner. Click the method of payment and go through the ritual of
buying your product on this automachine. So now you finish and you get your reciept job complete right?

Did you really cover your corners? Well what a teller can do from his computer is override the transaction and get cashback. So the 28 dollars you though were sitting safely to be used for another day is no longer there.

So my holiday tip is save your reciepts after you pay for an item with a gift card. The last thing you need is to have an empty plastic card you can't use because some greedy teller decided to reward themselves with your money.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

12 Scams of Christmas

If your a yahoo user then you may have seen this article called the 12 Scams of Christmas list.  If you haven't then you may want to check it out. Its an easy read and its the common and not so common online scams.

Now you know that Black Friday is just around the corner so here is a little holiday tip before you set off on your road trip if you happen to be traveling.

A friend of mine told me when she used her credit card to pay for her gas it went through all the proceedures but she did not wait until the screen cleared.  You may asked did she recieve a reciept? Yes she did so you think the transaction on her hard has ended right? With most gas pumps this is the norm but with Shell Gas stations its not so. So a rule of thumb is to wait until the beginning screen comes up again before leaving. This way if someone pulls up behind you they won't get free gas at your expense.

Stay tune for tomorrows Black Friday Scam prevention tip.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

5 Facebook Scams

This is a must read if your a facebook user. You just got to wait or click the skip add button to get to the article. Worth a read. Many are the classic email scams now reinvented on facebook.

If your a big fan of widgets such as finding out who your secret crush is you may want to read this article.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/022709-five-facebook-scams-protect-your.html?page=1

Monday, November 02, 2009

Craigslist motor car scam

Craigslist buy or beware especially when it comes to car purchases. I saw this story on my local news of this woman who found a car online on craigslist where the car was located in another state.

The car was a lexus and the selling price for this car was 6000 dollars with low miles.
The owner of the car told her he needed to close the deal so he can move this car as soon as possible. He assured her the title on the car was clean and all she needed to do is pay with a wire gram and she can pick up the car. The last part is if a deal looks to good to be true it probably is too good to be true.

The owner of the car sent her to a fake ebay motors website where she wired the money to Veronica Martinez.

To make a long story short she never got the car and the online scam artist made off with her money.

What made this transaction fishy in the first place is that the car was in another state. This is the first clue. The second clue is how the money was transfered. Anytime you deal with an ebay auction you want to make sure you pay with something more secure.

The moral of this story if your going to buy a car, buy local unless your willing to go and pay directly with that person. Never wire money since almost 75 percent of the time these are online scams.