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-ca...

https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/4189100/households-sent-fake-royal-mail-missed-de...

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/635628/Fake-Royal-Mail-missed-delive...

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...

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-...

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/warning-as-scammers-target-households-with-fak...

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

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-mi...


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...

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-th...

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.