Neighbor brought me a scam ... bless his heart

[swirt]

3 couples just sit down this morning for breakfast at 8:30 outside. As I am just getting ready to run the fruit course out, a pickup truck pulls in the driveway .... DW says "I'll go do the fruit, you go deal with THAT." I walk out and it is a guy that lives nearly a mile away from us. We consider him a neighbor because we walk our dog down along the lake and pass his house on the way. He has a small summer cottage next to his house that he rents out by the week. He smiles and says he may have some business for us. He says an engineer who works for Siemens in the UK is sending two technicians to our area for 10 days in October, but they want two rooms and he only has one. (October is our busiest month and is usually fully booked by June but he has no reason to know that.) I tell him we are full, he says well if you get a cancellation here's a copy of the email.
I take one look and it is one of thos classic "I am Eng OWEN CURTISS from SIEMEN"S TECHNOLOGIES INC and we are sending two technicians to your area for 10 days please get back to me ASAP with complete costs... from [email protected] . I start grinning from ear to ear and say "make sure you don't respond to this." He looks puzzled, and says "Why." I then explain that we get several of these a day and they are all a scam. I point out that Siemens is a huge technology company that would never be using Yahoo as their email, and then describe how the scam would proceed if he contacted them.
He meant well.... bless his heart.

 

[user 26]

how disappointing for him! and he was going to share with you. sounds like they were reeling him in.

 

[JunieBJones (JBJ)]

I had a phone call yesterday of the same tone. Travel agent with more of the same. Listen you can book online and keep the extra $10 off for booking online if YOU WANT TO! Always have to be on your toes.

 

[JunieBJones (JBJ)]

This one is slightly different, but more of the same. Any new to this business, please not the EMAIL ADDRESS of the sender - if it is not a valid email address - ie company name, do not even proceed from there.
Note ZERO punctuation. Even my SPAM filter chewed this one up! New Zleand websites would have co.nz as the extension on most of them if not using an American YAHOO account or something.
Sharon Prime [[email protected]]
Hello Sir/Ma, My name is Sharon Prime, Am the Secretary to a private organization, we served as Hotel Consultancy all over the world, we have our headquarter in New Zealand. The main importance of sending this email to you is to show our utmost sincerity and honesty to our clients in respect of this Enquiries. I want to know if you can make booking for our clients who are willing to come to your country for a conference. The conference is to take the 5-7 days and they will be on the hotel throughout the conference. Here is the reservation details. 1. Micheal Bordinson 2. Connell Oneal 3. Frank Ashyle 4. Daine Castle 5. Luise Freder. Checking date for the clients is 02/09/208 and they will check out date will be 09/09/2008. 5 Days each and they will like to stay in Double Rooms which is fully Equipped. So please try and get back to us with the information needed for the reservation, more so please try and calculate the total sum of the reservation for the 5 clients. Please note that the price include all feeding and tax for the clients. Immediately this information are received from you, we will surely send your hotel the Credit and banking information of the clients and the authorization letter which is duely signed by the card owner for confirmation of their booking. I will be waiting to read from you so as to prepare all what is needed for the reservation. Thanks Very Much for Cooperation Sharon Prime.
KEY WORDS - GET BACK TO US. LENGTH OF STAY they would call and book with you or book online. With 1 million people in New Zealand and 10 million sheep - even the sheep are surfing the internet and can book online these days. LOL
Lastly, trying to convince us that this is legit - "utmost sincerity" Like I have said about someone recently in the news who will remain unnamed and makes big claims - as does this person - "A MOUSE IN A COOKIE JAR DOES NOT MAKE IT A COOKIE" People can SAY whatever they want to say. We have to be better than that as reading through people.
PS DH is from NZ and surely doesn't speak in broken English. He might say toe-mah-toe, and fush n chups, but not broken english.

 

[user 26]

This one is slightly different, but more of the same. Any new to this business, please not the EMAIL ADDRESS of the sender - if it is not a valid email address - ie company name, do not even proceed from there.
Note ZERO punctuation. Even my SPAM filter chewed this one up! New Zleand websites would have co.nz as the extension on most of them if not using an American YAHOO account or something.
Sharon Prime [[email protected]]
Hello Sir/Ma, My name is Sharon Prime, Am the Secretary to a private organization, we served as Hotel Consultancy all over the world, we have our headquarter in New Zealand. The main importance of sending this email to you is to show our utmost sincerity and honesty to our clients in respect of this Enquiries. I want to know if you can make booking for our clients who are willing to come to your country for a conference. The conference is to take the 5-7 days and they will be on the hotel throughout the conference. Here is the reservation details. 1. Micheal Bordinson 2. Connell Oneal 3. Frank Ashyle 4. Daine Castle 5. Luise Freder. Checking date for the clients is 02/09/208 and they will check out date will be 09/09/2008. 5 Days each and they will like to stay in Double Rooms which is fully Equipped. So please try and get back to us with the information needed for the reservation, more so please try and calculate the total sum of the reservation for the 5 clients. Please note that the price include all feeding and tax for the clients. Immediately this information are received from you, we will surely send your hotel the Credit and banking information of the clients and the authorization letter which is duely signed by the card owner for confirmation of their booking. I will be waiting to read from you so as to prepare all what is needed for the reservation. Thanks Very Much for Cooperation Sharon Prime.
KEY WORDS - GET BACK TO US. LENGTH OF STAY they would call and book with you or book online. With 1 million people in New Zealand and 10 million sheep - even the sheep are surfing the internet and can book online these days. LOL
Lastly, trying to convince us that this is legit - "utmost sincerity" Like I have said about someone recently in the news who will remain unnamed and makes big claims - as does this person - "A MOUSE IN A COOKIE JAR DOES NOT MAKE IT A COOKIE" People can SAY whatever they want to say. We have to be better than that as reading through people.
PS DH is from NZ and surely doesn't speak in broken English. He might say toe-mah-toe, and fush n chups, but not broken english..

"A MOUSE IN A COOKIE JAR DOES NOT MAKE IT A COOKIE"

haha love it!

 

[user 26]

4 of these today:
Greetings Sir/Madam,
My name is Frank Williams,4 of my clients from Greece will be visiting your Area for a
Tour/Vacation,i want to make a reservation in your facility for them
Arrival date:20th October 2008
Departure date:29th October 2008
Number of days:10
Type of room:double room
Number of rooms:2
Name of Group :Hekulu Fundation
kindly confirm Availability and get back to me with total cost so we can pay a deposit.I await for your kind reply.
Best Regards
Frank.
Tel : +44 70457 70565
+4470359 16127

 

[Sanctuary]

I do recognize these as scams by their verbage and lack of punctuation, but what is the scam? What is the scam is responding to an inquiry for a quote? I've never received one of these. Suppose I do quote a rate for the stay...and they pay by credit card, in advance...what happens next?

 

[Sanctuary]

I do recognize these as scams by their verbage and lack of punctuation, but what is the scam? What is the scam behind responding to an inquiry for a quote? I've never received one of these. Suppose I do quote a rate for the stay...and they pay by credit card, in advance...what happens next?

 

[swirt]

There is a couple directions these take. Most often they go like this....they blind you with greed by saying they want several rooms for a long time (4 rooms for 10 days or something like that). If you respond that you have openings, tehy say send us the total bill. You say our rate is x and so your bill would be $4,000 They send you a bank check for $4500 and you contact them to say that they overpaid. They say oh..deposit the check and then send us a check fo the $500. You send them a check for $500 which ends up clearing before the bank discovers and notifies you that the original bank check was a fraud and the check was no good. You are now out $500.
There are variations, (the overpayment is for a rental car payment, or spending cash for the people who are coming...) They may offer to use a credit card, but in the end they will end up sending you a check (the card will fail for some reason)

 

[adabweeks]

There is a couple directions these take. Most often they go like this....they blind you with greed by saying they want several rooms for a long time (4 rooms for 10 days or something like that). If you respond that you have openings, tehy say send us the total bill. You say our rate is x and so your bill would be $4,000 They send you a bank check for $4500 and you contact them to say that they overpaid. They say oh..deposit the check and then send us a check fo the $500. You send them a check for $500 which ends up clearing before the bank discovers and notifies you that the original bank check was a fraud and the check was no good. You are now out $500.
There are variations, (the overpayment is for a rental car payment, or spending cash for the people who are coming...) They may offer to use a credit card, but in the end they will end up sending you a check (the card will fail for some reason).

I received one of these requests one time for 4 couples wanting 4 rooms for 10 days. First of all it clearly states we only have 2 rooms, knew it was a scam because of the usual punctuation or lack of and wording. They wanted to know the total and what payment I would accept. Was feeling a bit testy that day and probably should have deleted it, but just responded I would book the room for them but would only accept cash payment in the amount of $6,000.00 cash (CAD). Never heard from them again.

Small sense of revenge on these scammers!
adabweeks

 

[Morticia]

I do recognize these as scams by their verbage and lack of punctuation, but what is the scam? What is the scam behind responding to an inquiry for a quote? I've never received one of these. Suppose I do quote a rate for the stay...and they pay by credit card, in advance...what happens next?.

I do recognize these as scams by their verbage and lack of punctuation, but what is the scam? What is the scam behind responding to an inquiry for a quote? I've never received one of these. Suppose I do quote a rate for the stay...and they pay by credit card, in advance...what happens next?

One problem with responding is that your email is validated and gets on (more) spam lists. I am assuming I get hundreds of these I never see because the only mail I 'accept' is mail addressed to the only 2 email addresses I have set up. If mail comes to 'bob' @mywebsite it is canned before I see it. Ditto any other name/word/letter. So, the one or two I get/month now are sent to the actual email address I have set up and then my spam filter (Keirnet) picks them up.