(WHTM) — It’s crunch time for holiday shopping and lots of people will be turning to Amazon.
Unfortunately, scammers are also out there ready to pounce.
During the mad dash of the holiday season more and more shoppers are skipping the malls and heading to Amazon.
“It’s definitely the season and this quarter we’re lucky enough our customers love shopping on Amazon and we do a significant amount of business this time of year and it keeps us crazy busy,” Amazon’s Scott Knapp said.
Unfortunately, they’re not the only ones who are crazy busy. Knapp says thieves are also working hard to trick you.
“Amazon, we happen to enjoy being a popular trusted brand, so certainly scammers try to use our name and fool customers into interacting with them,” he said.
All to get your money.
“Watch out for people trying to have you pay for things over the phone or via email, that is something we will never ask you to do,” Knapp said.
And of course, the ever-popular gift card scam.
“Be on the lookout for people trying to make you pay with gift cards. It’s great to use that gift card a family member might have given you, but watch out if someone’s trying to require you to use it. There’s no legitimate transaction that’s going to require you to use gift cards,” Knapp said.
But now thieves are actually pretending to be Amazon.
“They might send you a text and say, ‘Hey there’s a problem with your Amazon order. Click here or call us or text us back so we can get it figured out.’ It is not us reaching out to you and that never ends super well when you engage with them,” Knapp said.
Be wary of clicking links in messages, they can take you to dangerous sites that steal your info.
Another scam on the rise, you’ll get a message alerting you to a problem with your prime membership.
“They’ll try to help you solve it by asking for your credit card details, your banking information, some of them will even say,’Well if you just pay us a certain amount of money, we’ll fix it for you,’” Knapp said.
That’s always a scam. Don’t fall for it.
Kanpp says that most sure way to know if there is a problem with your Amazon delivery is to go to the the app and look at the message center.
One more scam to look out for is on the Amazon site itself. Counterfeit items from third party sellers. These items may look appealing because of fake reviews.
Amazon says it’s continually working to crack down on that.
“We have some really smart scientists that have developed some really great algorithms backed up by humans that look at these reviews and take them down before customers ever see them,” Knapp said.
Fake review red flags include a very high percentage of five-star reviews, generic reviews, and vague praise.
If you fall victim to a counterfeit or any scam, report it to Amazon directly by going to amazon.com/reportascam.
