Farrukh Dhondy | Online scams are proliferating… Be careful, or you could lose money

In autumn in London the pavements are lush

With the palm-shaped debris, yellow and dry

Till the coming of winter, heralding the birth

In spring of new leaves, I now wonder why

I’ve never remarked on Plane trees in bloom

But comment on their largesse now their leaves fall,

As the feet of the passers nudge them aside --

So many -- how will the councils assume

To gather as garbage this autumnal pride?”

From The Bells of Bellpuri, by Bachchoo

I am constantly warned, through emails and posts on WhatsApp, against scams. Only yesterday I was offered malware to protect against malware. Like the perpetual liar confessing “Everything I say is a lie”?

And no, gentle reader, I didn’t send my bank details to the Nigerian Lottery which wanted to deposit my winnings on a ticket bought for me by an anonymous admirer.

But alas, I have stumbled, fallen through gullibility. Not once, but twice.

Chump’s election forced me to postpone this confession but now here it is: Some weeks ago, the plastic handle of my steam-iron broke. I instinctively tried Superglue. No luck!

As most of my friends do, and I inductively follow, I seek answers to banal questions from Google. I once asked it why the bhakras (Parsi sweet biscuits) I cook don’t swell up like puris, when those cooked by my grandma and mum did spectacularly. I got a reasonable answer, even to that! So, I asked Googs if some plastics are resistant to superglue and he/she/it/they (one has to be so careful these days!) said “yes” and gave me chemical details which I dare not bore you with.

I ventured further and troubled Googy again, asking the oracle if there were any glues which would stick recalcitrant plastics and answer came there in a flood. Googlita suggested several tubes of stuff that would do the trick.

I selected the second cheapest as I was offered a large range of prices.

The vendor of this stuff is called Ozerty, and the price advertised was £4.49. I trustingly filled in my particulars -- email, debit card details, address, etc. I chose “Free Delivery” when given the option and pressed the buttons to complete the sale.

It said it would be delivered in a couple of days. Great.

A day or so later I had occasion to look up my telephone banking account details and the charge against the Ozerty glue was £18.44. What??? I emailed Ozerty to ask why I had been charged the extra 14 or so pounds. A female operative replied saying that I had incurred an “eco-charge” as my order was for less than £20 and Ozerty is charging this extra eco-charge to protect the environment for deliveries of small orders.

I was informed in the same email that there was a notice to tell me that an eco-charge would be added. I didn’t notice this as it appeared in a non-descriptive way which no buyer would notice. It didn’t say what the charge would be and didn’t ask for the customer’s consent. I’ve demanded my money back. An email reply said they couldn’t send me the money until I received and returned the product.

It doesn’t end there!!!! I looked at my phone banking account ten days after I had placed the first order. I’d not ordered anything after that first £4.44 glue.

The account now shows that Ozerty has used my debit card to charge me £29.99 for absolutely nothing. I ordered nothing or communicated with Ozerty about any of their products. Was this outright fraud?

I lodged a complaint through email demanding my money back and saying I’ll inform my bank of an unauthorised charge.

Ozerty replied saying they’d signed me up as a “subscriber” and listed the benefits and discounts I’d get when I bought other products. I don’t want their products or their discounts or their subscription which I never asked for!

Perhaps they mean well with the eco-charge and will use the extra £14 to bribe China to stop using fossil fuels? And perhaps they’ll make me an unsubscriber and return my money?

And so, gentle reader, to my other, earlier gullibility. It’s a different sort of story. Very briefly, experiencing some hearing loss perhaps two years ago an ad popped up on my computer saying it could definitely tackle loss of hearing and offered me a video to see how.

I fell for it. The video had a qualified doctor saying he was going deaf and told us how he suffered from it and led to his determination to find a cure. He did.

His life suddenly blossomed, from the closed hearing bud to the full flowering of sound. There followed the syrupy testimony of several people who swore by the cure.

OK, I fell for it and bought the pills, took the six-week course of them and noticed -- a deterioration in my hearing. Conned.

Since then, I’ve noticed several ads and videos of precisely the same sort for loss of vision, arthritis -- anything that age incurably brings. The videos follow the same pattern: the inventive doctors who suffer then find the natural cure, get witnesses who have been cured to testify, attack Big Pharma as their enemy and then sell their -- snake oil? Caveat emptor!