The Scam Alert Blog

Scammers come in all sizes, some are tried by individuals who can use their anonymity as a disguise, while others are performed by large recognizable entities who use their social acceptance as a stamp of approval for everything they do. The second type of scammer is who we’d like to talk about here.

Many of the largest online flower shops are scamming local florists out of legitimate sales. The victims here are, indirectly the customer through price compensation, but mainly the local florists who both establishes face-to-face relationships with the customers as well as fulfills most of the orders from these big online flower companies.

What flower companies are we talking about?

1-800-Flowers
TeleFlora
FTD
…and more!

What exactly are they doing?

You can read the full letter to the FTC about 1800Flowers here, but in a nutshell: These large online flower companies are deducting the service charge they normally charge for transferring an order from them to the local florist and calling it “free shipping”. This is not true in the slightest and gives an unfair advantage as many online retailers, marketers, and marketing experts will tell you that nothing increases sales online like an offering of “free shipping”.

You can find out more information on this and other issues affecting the florist trade by reading The Real Florists Blog regularly.

If you’d like to find out about more florist related scams, check out The Florist Detective.

Here is the story of one “alleged” scammer who is accused of selling trampolines and then not delivering them, but keeping the money.

Customers of Regions Bank, primarily located in the southeastern United States, were the recent target of an online scam performed using a computerized telephone call.

Bank customers were called and asked to verify their banking information online and given a website to do so. Of course, the website is fake and just a way for a scammer to gather people’s usernames, passwords, account numbers, and more. The bank has urged all customers who received this call to call or come into the bank.

Full story is here

While this particular scam was confined to customers of this specific bank, be warned that this could happen to you as well. If you ever receive word to verify your account information online… please confirm with your financial institution first if the message came from them. Don’t let the scammers win.

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