Be on the look out for delivery packages that may end up at your door, which you didn’t order. The latest scam, also known as a brushing scam, has many Americans receiving surprise shipments of unwanted, un-ordered, random goods.
The brushing scam is a technique some deceitful online retailers use to generate fake reviews for their products. Usually a third-party seller on a major e-commerce site is looking to achieve “verified merchant status,” enabling a seller to write product reviews on someone else’s behalf. Typically, the scam involves a foreign company acquiring someone’s address they found online, and then delivering products to their home.
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) spokesperson Josh Planos said in a statement, “They intend to make it appear that you wrote a glowing online review of their merchandise and that you are a verified buyer of that merchandise… They then post a fake, positive review to improve their products’ perspective.” Planos advises anyone receiving unsolicited merchandise to contact retailers directly to get such deliveries stopped.
Temu advises customers to contact them so that they can investigate why it happened and get it corrected. A spokesperson for the company said, “In the case of brushing, Temu strictly prohibits this practice and will take action against violators.”
In order to protect your personal information, the BBB advises the following steps if you’ve received an unsolicited package from Temu, Amazon, or any other retailer:
Notify the retailer and ask them to investigate any fraudulent purchases, try to contact the sender and ask them to remove any reviews written in your name, check your online e-commerce accounts for recent orders, possibly change the address of future package deliveries, change your online passwords for those accounts and monitor your credit card statements and credit reports.
By - FZ
