Best Defense Against Telescam: Healthy Consumer Suspicion
Question: In mid-March, I sent a check for $249.95 to a marketing firm in Dallas for a Magnavox remote control VCR (retail value, $469.95) that I had won in their sweepstakes. I received a delivery notification on April 3 that said it would take 10 to 14 days for postal delivery. Then on April 21, I received a card saying there was a temporary delay from their supplier, but that it would be shipped within 30 days. The card also said I could cancel before shipment was made.
I called their 800 number to cancel, but was told it had been shipped a week earlier by fourth-class mail and that I would have to pay $20.24 for shipping and postage when it was delivered. It is now four weeks after they had told me it was shipped. Can you help me get my money back?
--L.S.
Answer: Not without putting a gun to someone’s head in Dallas, I suspect. For three days there’s been no response on the 800 number, so it’s reasonable to assume that they have folded their tent and moved on.
As we discussed a few weeks ago, this is a typical “telescam” built around the “You’ve-just-won-a-fabulous-sweepstakes-gift” (but there are a few modest, up-front expenses involved) idea. This has to be a pretty persuasive outfit to have conned you out of $249.95 for a “prize” costing only $469 retail.
While telescams have hit tidal-wave proportions, some progress is being made, though, according to David A. Katz, coordinator of the Southern California Fraud Task Force--a consortium of local, state and federal investigative agencies.
“In the three years we’ve been operating,” Katz adds, “we’ve prosecuted about 300 fraud cases, and in the last 14 months alone, we’ve gotten sentences of five years or more in 22 of them--some of them in excess of 10 years.”
But wiping telescams out of business is still a long way down the road. Chalk it up to experience, swallow your loss, and never send anyone any money in the future for anything that you’ve “won,” or that is an “investment opportunity” that has to be taken advantage of immediately . Sorry to be the bearer of such bad news.
