Consumer NZ's scambassador got scammed!

I’m not alone; our latest research has found that 10% of households in New Zealand lost money to a scam in the past year.

The typical victim

I’m a walking, talking example of a typical scam victim. I’m in my early 40s, and I’m busy. Like many people in my age bracket, I’m juggling a family and a full-time job. I’m usually thinking about too many things at once: Did my son put his permission slip in his school bag? I forgot to put the bins out. My daughter needs a ride to futsal, who can I ask? Argh, the train’s running late again, and I’m going to miss my meeting. I really need to sort out my son’s birthday present. This mental load makes me susceptible to scammers. Yet, even though I know this, they still got me.

As I boarded the late train, I remembered to order the mystery football shirt that was top of my son’s birthday wish list.

Mystery football shirts are popular with young football fans. The idea is you head to one of the many online stores selling them, select your size and note any teams or leagues that you don’t want to receive a shirt from. Then you sit back and wait for your mystery shirt to arrive, it comes in a mystery box, wrapped in tissue paper, and, hey presto, you’ve got a big reveal in the form of a football shirt from a team you might never have heard of, and a whole new allegiance is born.

My son’s birthday was still 3 weeks away, but the shirt was coming from England, and I wanted to allow enough time for it to make its way around the world. I’d got him one for his previous birthday, and he’d loved it. Although I couldn’t quite remember which company I ordered the original shirt from, I had received lots of emails from a company selling mystery football shirts and distributing them worldwide. Their latest email included a discount code, and I was convinced it was the same store I’d bought from the year before.

Conveniently, I was able to place the order via my phone, from the train, and I opted for Google Pay because it was a one-click option. Easy. Done. However, as soon as I’d placed the order, I realised that, when I’d auto-populated the name field, it had carried over my old address. Although I was annoyed with myself for not spotting this, I wasn't too worried. The delivery charge had been steep at $31, but that was because it would be internationally tracked. And that meant I would be able to update the address once the parcel was with NZ Post. However, to save any confusion, and seeing as I’d placed the order less than a minute ago, I emailed the company and told them about my error. I asked them to update the address to match the billing address and to confirm receipt of my email.

The penny drops

Two days passed, and I received no response to my address-change email. I sent a follow-up email and asked again for confirmation of receipt.

Still no response. I looked for alternative contact details. I sent a DM on X (formerly known as Twitter). I checked out the company on Instagram and saw they had 150,000 followers. I noted the website said the average response time was 48 hours, and I reasoned that the discount code probably meant there’d been a surge in orders, and I was bound to hear something soon.

A few more days passed; my suspicions were bubbling. But I reassured myself the shirt had arrived the year before, so why would this time be any different?

I checked Trustpilot – that’s where I usually go to gauge a site’s legitimacy. I entered the name of the company I ordered from, and the reviews were terrible. That’s when I remembered, the previous year I’d checked Trustpilot first, and because their reviews were so bad, I’d found another company with better ratings. This time, I’d unwittingly ordered from the site I’d deliberately avoided the previous year!

Stretching back my mind to 2023, I recalled very nearly going through with an order from one company, then checking the independent reviews of the site and not liking what I found. Back then, I abandoned the purchase but, over subsequent months, I received regular marketing and discount-code emails. That’s why that company with its latest discount code was sitting at the top of my inbox when I went to reorder a year later.

Fighting back

It was time to pull out the big guns and email the company from my work (Consumer NZ) email address. I told them I was leading the campaign to stamp out scams in New Zealand and I believed they had scammed me. My evidence was the unanswered emails, lousy Trustpilot rating and lack of an update on my order. I asked for a response within a week. Nothing came.

I decided to lodge a chargeback request from my bank, and I set aside time to gather the evidence to submit. In the meantime, I received an email from the company, informing me my order was on its way and there was a tracking number I could click on to monitor progress. I first clicked on that tracking number on 10 October 2024. The reply came as: “We’re expecting it. The sender has let us know they have despatched your item. More information will be available once we have received your item and scanned it into our network.” At the time of writing this piece, over seven months later, the message is the same. Safe to assume, the parcel is not coming, and it seems unlikely the postal service will ever see it either.

Eventually, I completed the chargeback request from my bank. Although I had to send the information twice, which was slightly annoying, the bank was responsive and credited me the money within about a week. There’s a chance they might ask for it back if the merchant can prove the transaction was valid.

The moral of the story?

I felt like a fool, even though I’m always telling people not to blame themselves if they’re tricked by a scammer. Turns out, that’s not the only piece of my own advice that I ignored.

Scammers use pressure tactics. In this instance, it was the limited-time discount code that hooked me in. Consumer warns people to watch out for deals that seem too good to be true and to be wary of deals with a timer attached. I’d acted too quickly to cash in on that discount code.

The volume of emails I received from the company over the previous months gave me the sense it was a legitimate business. There’s a whole psychology to scamming, and the fact I had seen this company’s name frequently appearing in my inbox led me to trust it.

Being someone who’s clued up on their consumer rights I knew to approach the bank and ask for a chargeback. However, many other people wouldn’t know to try this, and I think many sites, like the one I “bought” from, expect people to give up after a few contact attempts and put their loss down to bad luck. That’s hard for the out-of-pocket consumer and easy money for the unscrupulous scammer.

I should report my experience, but I don’t know where to start – trying to navigate how to dob in a scam attempt in New Zealand is hard work. We need a one-stop shop for reporting scams and scam attempts.

What's happening in Australia?

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) runs the Australian National Anti-Scam Centre (NASC). The centre offers a one-stop shop for Australians to report suspicious websites. The centre coordinates government and industry to combat scams – reducing or limiting access to thousands of investment, phishing and online shopping scam websites. The NASC also works in partnership with law enforcement agencies in Australia and overseas, including the Australian Federal Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States, to reduce the number of Australians harmed by scams. Reported sites are investigated and, if appropriate, shut down within an average of 10 hours from the time of reporting. According to the ACCC, online shopping scams accounted for 50% of the fraudulent or malicious websites the centre took down in the three months to December 2024.

We want action

On home soil, Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Scott Simpson is the lead minister coordinating the cross-agency work to combat scams.

We are pleased that a lead minister has been appointed, but we’re not going to stop in our efforts to stamp out scamming. We need swift action and strong leadership to protect people from the growing threat of scams in New Zealand.

Consumer will keep on the pressure to demand the government, banks, telecommunications companies and digital platforms do more to keep us safe. Please consider adding your voice to our call for stronger scam protections and sign this petition.