Cape Town - The SA Post Office (Sapo) has warned the public of scammers using the Sapo logo to take money from people.
Sapo said it had noted a sharp increase in the number of scams using its logo to mislead members of the public.
It said the scammers’ modus operandi was to send an SMS stating that a “parcel addressed to them could not be delivered due to a missing address”.
“The customer is then asked to click on a link and make a payment, or to enter their bank card details.
“The ‘transaction’ then appears to be unsuccessful but, by then, scammers have received the details of the bank account.
“Members of the public who receive such SMS notices should mark the message as spam and delete it immediately.”
Sapo said that if there were customs fees payable on a postal parcel from another country, the client had to pay the fees when they collected the parcel.
The Post Office said it also gave customers the opportunity to check a parcel before they collected it and therefore did not require the payment of any fees before collection.
“The Post Office normally sends an SMS when a parcel is ready for collection and never requests an EFT or online payment before a parcel is collected. Any request for an electronic payment should be viewed as a scam.”
Cape Times