![]() Beware of ALL scams, because we tend to forget that before there was the seedy underbelly of internet scams, there was a booming trade conducted through the USPS.The Amazon Gift Card Amazon Gift Card Scratched Offįor total information and resources for Amazon Gift Card Scratched Off Thank God I noticed it, because my Mom had already started filling out information. Apparently, this genre of scams has branches out by pretending to offer Giant prizes, with an Amazon card starting at $5, but climbing “up to $100” as an at least partially believable consolation price. The scam mailers for these invariably come with a blank key attached, allegedly for the purpose of seeing if one’s luck has miraculously taken a positive turn (and it would indeed be truly miraculous, since every key is quite obviously a poorly crafted blank–by the way, these keys serve beautifully for playtime props for age group 7+, so waste not, want not–to carry to the lot) One is then supposed to see if the shoddy key replica will start the engine, usually to the latest high-end sports car that is the most valuable thing on the lot. The scam companies usually send the spam en masse on behalf of whatever business might hire them, predominantly car lots. The alleged “win” completely defies the astronomical odds–think Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty when he gets fed up with answering prayers and hits the “yes to all” button, thereby triggering chaos as EVERYONE wins the lottery, thus diminishing the payouts to such a degree that the winners almost owed the lottery rather than being paid by them–by issuing the winning Golden Ticket to EVERYONE. Unlike me, she hasn’t received a gazillion “scratch-and-win” mailers where, of course, each target just so happens to win. (By the way, ARV usually stands for either antiretroviral, or after repair value, neither of which we think belongs in contest rules.)ĭid you receive one of these? If so, let us know, and let us know if you called, and what happened. In fact, the fine print says to “See full Official Rules for additional eligibility restrictions, prize descriptions/restrictions/ARVs” but nowhere does it tell you where to find them. So who is the scummy outfit behind this scammy promotion? Well, the back of the card says that “This promotion is sponsored solely by PTL”, and that is the only indication of who may be behind it. Of course, that is as valuable to the telemarketer as your walking in the door is to the local business – maybe even more so because now they have your private information to sell on a list of “guaranteed to respond to promotions like this” individuals. The way they will get you to go there is to tell you that you need to go down to the local business who is “sponsoring the promotion” (often a place like a car dealership or timeshare “event” or some other high ticket, high pressure sales product), so that you can compare your number to the number on the prize board at the local location, to see what (ahem.if) you have won.īut first they will get your name, address, email address, telephone number, and whatever other information they can out of you. Your tips via CashApp, Venmo, or Paypal are appreciated! Receipts will come from ISIPP. The Internet Patrol is completely free, and reader-supported. So here’s how this Amazon “scratch & match” scam works: Your numbers will match, because the entire point of this scam is to get you to call the number, which goes to a call center, and which will be answered by a telemarketer whose sole job is to get you to visit a local business who has hired this scam outfit to get people to their business. In fact, in the late 1600s the UK appointed the first Assistant Solicitor to the General Post Office to deal with mail fraud and related crimes. The psychology of this is interesting: we are so used to spam email scams that we don’t really think about postal mail scams any more, even though of course mail fraud has been around for centuries. That you will think “well, it could be legitimate, after all, they wouldn’t go through the trouble of mailing it if it weren’t legitimate, they would just spam my email, right?” ![]() And, in fact, that’s what they are banking on. Scratch & Match Amazon Scam Gift Card in Your MailboxĪs you can see by this image of an actual ‘scratch and match’ Amazon gift card scam mailed out and received during the first week of October, 2019, it looks like a real Amazon gift card, and it looks as if it might be legitimate.
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