Royal Mail regularly updates its website on common scams that customers should look out for. This includes a number of texts and emails which have fraudulent links. One woman took to social media to share her experience that left her “scammed out of every penny”.

“On Friday, I received the Royal Mail text that’s been doing the rounds, asking for me to pay £2.99 additional postage fee. I didn’t know about the scam and I even checked the website and thought it was legit.”

The woman explained that she was expecting parcels due to it being her birthday soon and so entered her bank details.

She added: “Yesterday I got a phone call from Barclays to say that someone had tried to set up direct debits in my account to Vodafone and Curries/PC World. They said a transaction of over £300 had also been attempted to Argos.”

The woman was then asked to transfer all of her money to a new account where she was scammed by the person of the phone and left with no money.

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She even explained that the number that rang her was the same number as the actual fraud team at her bank.

The Twitter user continued: “I spent the rest of the day sobbing while on hold to the actual Barclays and after several hours, they’d cancelled my cards and issued new ones and have launched an investigation into my fraud claim.

“They said that this is a very common scam known as the ‘Safe Account scam’. I think a lot of people have heard that term floating about but throughout the entire call, the guy never once said ‘Safe Account’, so it didn’t trigger any alarm bells.”

The post attracted more than 16,000 likes with hundreds of people explaining similar experiences as well as warning signs.

The company said: “The sender, subject and content may change slightly but often they:

– state there’s a parcel waiting to be collected

– ask for a payment before an item can be released for delivery

– prompts you to open a link or document

– asks you to send a text message or call a phone premium rate phone number.”

The fake text messages that are known to Royal Mail include asking customers to pay an outstanding fee.

1. “Your Royal Mail parcel is waiting for delivery. Please confirm the settlement of 2.99 (GBP) on the following link.”

2. “Royalmail Express: Your package EA774980313UK shipped within 48 hours (2.00 GBP).”

3. “Royal Mail Notification: Your parcel has arrived at September 06th, 2019. Courier was unable to deliver the parcel to you. Please confirm your parcel from £3.95.”

4. Royal Mail: Your package has a £2.99 shipping fee, to pay this now visit royalmail-redelivery.support. Actions will be taken if you do not pay this fee.”

Customers are asked not to click on any of the links.

Example scam emails include customers being asked to pay custom duty as well as asking to reschedule a delivery.

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