Last updated April 16, 2026 — Revised for clarity.
This example of a shopping scam illustrates the importance of vigilance to avoid being caught off guard by criminals buying merchandise online.
It was a late Friday evening, and I was closing my phone system business for the weekend. Suddenly, the phone rang. The caller claimed to be a corporate buyer needing to place an order for next-day delivery.
He said he needed to show it at a board of directors meeting on Saturday, when they will decide to order additional units for their satellite offices.
He was using an effective scammer trick — getting people to act quickly without due diligence by creating a sense of urgency.
I fell for the urgent nature, especially since it could mean additional sales from the company. So I offered to ship COD with overnight delivery.
However, he said the accounting department was closed already, and no one was there to draft a check for the COD payment.
That seemed legitimate, so I said I could charge it to a credit card.
He kept responding to every solution with an excuse that sounded legitimate. This time, he said he didn’t want to use his own credit card and said he didn’t have a corporate credit card either.
Failing to exercise caution due to the possibility of more sales, I considered the only remaining option — to ship with an invoice and Net-30 terms for payment. I routinely did that with well-known corporations.
Practicing due diligence, I quickly looked up the company’s corporate status to be sure they were trustworthy with a history of payments.
After researching the company and discovering no negative feedback, I felt confident in proceeding with shipping the product.
More than 30 days went by without payment. And they refused to pay when I contacted their accounting department. They claimed they never approved that purchase.
I asked for the product to be returned, but they said they didn’t have it.
When I told them the tracking showed it was signed for by that fellow who called to place the order, they told me he was not a buyer for the company.
The experience had a profound impact on my finances, as the scammer successfully tricked me into handing over an expensive phone system without ever making a payment.
The loss left me feeling vulnerable and deceived. The solution would have been to insist on a written purchase order.
Of course, he would have said the purchasing department personnel were all gone for the day, so no one was available to create a purchase order. But that should have been his problem, and it would have avoided being scammed into a fraudulent deal.
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