A Williams Lake senior will be very careful about accepting parcels after she received two brand new cell phones she had not ordered.
To her surprise there were two notices in her mailbox from Canada Post alerting her she had two parcels to pick up.
She wasn’t expecting any mail, but picked them up anyways, wondering if someone had sent her a gift.
When she arrived home and opened the parcels up she was surprised to see two new cell phones had been sent to her.
Within a few hours her phone rang and the caller ID displayed Telus.
The man on the other end told her she had received the phones by mistake and he was going to email her information to ship them off through courier.
An email arrived from a courier company with a packing slip that was already paid for. She needed to print it off and take the parcel to the courier service.
As she needed a ride to send them off, she had to wait for a friend to take her, but the man called back incessantly.
He kept asking if she’d sent the phones yet, threatened if she did not send them off she would be charged.
Once the phones were sent off, she felt a bit of relief.
That was until she received a text message from Telus - which she normally does for her bill - but this time, instead of the normal amount of $29 the amount was more than $600.
When she called Telus she was informed she had purchased three phones and would be billed $200 a month for each of them.
That’s when she realized she had been the victim of a scam.
Telus worked it out with her, but there was still the question of the third phone.
Where was it?
Recently she received a parcel notice, but was advised to leave it at the post office.
The Tribune contacted Telus and advised they should arrange to have the phone returned to Telus.
A few days later the woman received a call from the scammer - again with the Telus caller ID. The scammer also called her cell phone.
Thinking back as to how this could have happened, she recalled receiving a call from someone a few months back asking her if she was satisfied with her service with Telus. She responded she was disappointed her rate had gone up and the caller asked for her account number.
She never thought anything of it until her experience with the cell phones.
Telus has since changed her account number.
monica.lamb-yorski@wltribune.com
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