Qatar Post has sent an SMS saying “Dear customer, please be aware of fraudulent telephone calls, SMS or phishing e-mails asking for your credit/debit card number or any personal banking information. Please be careful and report any suspicious calls, SMS or emails to Qatar Post Help Desk at 104.”
Due to the prevailing Covid-19 pandemic situation, citizens and residents have been availing of various services provided by different entities in the country through Qatar Post. For instance, there are a large number of orders for medicines from the Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) and other institutions, and these are being delivered by Qatar Post.
As the PHCC collects only the amount for the medicine online, the postal charges are paid through credit or debit card while the medicines are delivered at the given address. Scamsters are making use of this and finding it an opportunity to trick customers by sending messages and asking them to pay the delivery charges online before the actual delivery of medicines.
A couple of days ago, a reader of Gulf Times got a message seemingly from Qatar Post asking for a payment of QR10.89 as charges for the delivery of medicines. However, he became suspicious about the SMS as the link provided to pay the sum seemed to be unheard of. He called the Qatar Post Help Centre at 104 to check if the message was genuine. A Qatar Post official informed him that the company never sends such messages.
“I got the message at night and thought of paying the money in the morning. I found a website (through the given link) with the Qatar Post logo and thought it was an original message. It showed the package number and the payment amount. However, when I checked the URL of the website, I became suspicious because I had never heard of such a payment gateway in Qatar. Therefore, I thought of contacting the call centre to make sure about this,” he told Gulf Times.
“Many people might fall prey to such tricks as they offer lower prices than what Qatar Post normally offers. In my case, I had to pay QR30 to Qatar Post but the amount to be paid through the link was QR10.89. The figure itself made me suspicious but many people may think that they are getting a lower price and end up paying, thus revealing personal banking information and risking huge financial loss,” he added.
Gulf Times also contacted the Qatar Post Help Centre and was informed that such messages were fake and people should never respond to such messages, emails or telephone calls. Further to that, Qatar Post has sent SMSes, urging everyone to be alert against fraudsters.
