Durban - The South African Post Office has issued a warning to the public to be on the alert of a parcel delivery scam designed to defraud them.
Johan Kruger, the spokesperson of the SA Post Office, said victims of the scam are emailed letter from a company purporting to be affiliated to ‘Speed Messenger Services’ using an adaptation of the Post Office’s Speed Services logo.
He said the letter demands payment for import duty on parcels before the parcels can be delivered.
"The SA Post Office does not require customers to make any payment before parcels are released. If VAT or any other fees are payable on a parcel, this is paid at a Post Office counter at the time when the parcel is collected. The customer will receive a valid receipt for this payment," he advised.
Kruger said where the Post Office has the cellphone number of the recipient, the customer will receive an SMS requesting him or her to collect the parcel at a specific Post Office branch. The SMS will not request that funds be deposited into an account.
"The SA Post Office advises the public to ignore communication of this nature,"Kruger said.
In April 2018, the SA Post office issued the same warning to the public. Kruger said they became aware of the scam after fielding a number of calls on their customer services line from people wanting to confirm that they indeed did have a parcel waiting for them.
Last year, Kruger said they received 12 of these queries from across the country, including in KwaZulu-Natal.
"At this stage, we can not say where the scammers got the numbers from, but they obviously have a set of contact numbers which they are working through,” said Kruger.
Members of the public that have information regarding this scam, are requested to call the SA Police or the Post Office’s Crime buster Hotline on 0800 020 070.