You may have seen the story about "fake Royal Mail delivery cards" in the press last week. Some newspapers reported that calling the number starting 0208 printed on the card would result in a £45 charge being added to your phone bill, This is, of course, complete nonsense.

This story started on Facebook, had a few mentions on Twitter e.g. http://archive.is/KXZe4 and then found its way into the Daily Express. Over the next few days, the story was then covered by almost every national, regional and local newspaper title in the UK.


Some examples...

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/836298/Post-office-scam-fake-missed-delivery-card-tracking-Royal-Mail-redelivery-warning

https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/4189100/households-sent-fake-royal-mail-missed-delivery-cards-that-trick-you-into-calling-a-premium-rate-phone-number/

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/635628/Fake-Royal-Mail-missed-delivery-card-scam-warning

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/08/warnings-fake-royal-mail-letters/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/missed-parcel-delivery-cards-scam-royal-mail-action-fraud-a7883506.html

http://www.mirror.co.uk/money/royal-mail-missed-delivery-card-10949784

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4773984/Warning-new-scam-involving-fake-Royal-Mail-cards.html

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/warning-as-scammers-target-households-with-fake-royal-mail-delivery-cards-a3607681.html

http://metro.co.uk/2017/08/09/warning-over-fake-missed-delivery-notes-posted-through-letterboxes-6840670/

https://www.lovemoney.com/news/66657/royal-mail-missed-delivery-card-scam-fake

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2017/08/the-latest-scam-doing-the-rounds-is-the-fake-missed-delivery-card/


The number on the card is a normal geographic London 020 landline number. Calls to this number, and to all other UK 01 and 02 numbers and 03 numbers are included in allowances, else charged at 'geographic rate'. The only way to run up a bill of £45 is to not have an inclusive calls allowance and to stay on the line for several hours.

It didn't take much searching, e.g. http://archive.is/S7gAN to discover the cards may have a completely different purpose.

It turns out that The Times is the only newspaper to have printed a story that was anywhere close to the truth...
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/royal-mail-warns-of-missed-delivery-card-scam-zw86zk88s

A bulletin from ActionFraud does not repeat the £45 claim and just makes a more generic point about being careful with things you weren't expecting...
http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/news/misleading-missed-delivery-cards-posted-through-letterboxes-aug17

It's shocking how lots of the comments made believe that you can be charged £45 for calling that number, also shocking that in one piece (I think the Express) the number is shown.... that could encourage others to call it...

Sloppy journalism, the Express weren't even sure if you could be charged £45... did they not call the number themselves!

The Times may have provided clearly journalism on this, but they have the story behind a pay wall....

More needs to be done about this to stop the perpetrators, but our Police are already overstretched.

In this case, there's no problem in showing the number, but most papers obscured most of it anyway. It's a normal London landline number.

In other cases of fraud and scams, it is vital that part of the number be obscured to stop other people calling it.

In this case there was no "scam" as such, no £45 charge, just bailiffs tricking debtors into revealing their telephone number. There may be a legal issue here, but it's not one involving call charges.

I agree totally with you Ian,

On another note, they couldn't even get the dialling code right... but that's just another pet peeve of mine!  ::) :-?