Sometimes I feel like scams have taken over my life. This week alone I had to cancel my card because there was a random transaction, received a fake Australia Post text message and had to screen 15 unknown numbers that tried to call me.
It’s a jungle out there.
We all dodge scams on the daily that we all probably think that we’re seasoned veterans at this point. You can’t fool us!
Well, a TikTok user thought the same thing when shopping on a Decjuba website that turned out to be dodgy dot com. To be clear — it wasn’t a Decjuba website but rather a fraudulent copycat site pretending to be the major Aussie retailer.
The TikTok user, Camille Warfield, found herself on the domain because the address auto-populated in her web browser. You know what? I wouldn’t second guess that shit either but you bet I will be quadruple checking every auto-populated address moving forward.
Anyway, nothing really appeared to be out of order for the customer until she received a dodgy confirmation email of her transaction from a rogue Gmail account. She knew straight away that she’d been stitched up so she called her bank and did what she needed to do.
She’d come to terms with the fact that nothing would be arriving from Decjuba given it was never in fact Decjuba she was shopping from, so she even went and bought the product she wanted from a physical Decjuba store.
I think I like saying Decjuba in the same way Sandy Cohen liked saying Yogalates.
But then she received a notification from Australia Post — the Australia Post, not a fake — to find she had in fact been sent something. It was from China.
It wasn’t the jacket but a ring, which was silver meaning she won’t be wearing it. Was the right size, however!
Commenters were quick to point out that scammers send something so you don’t report it or cancel the card for a while.
For example, if the transaction goes through, you get a confirmation email and then you get an Australia Post notification, you mightn’t notice something is wrong until you actually open the parcel. Or see that it’s from China when you ordered something from Australia — whichever comes first, I guess?
“Yeah they send something so you can’t say you never got it,” one user wrote.
Other people mentioned receiving things like “speed dealer sunnies”, socks or fake designer items.
It appears that others have been getting scammed with copycat sites for Peter Alexander, ECHT, Mimco, Frankie4 and more.
I’ll be reading every single confirmation email I get from now on — because if Warfield hadn’t, she might’ve had some unusual activity on her card from the time of purchase to the time she opened the parcel and realised what was going down.
I honestly wonder if I ever would’ve figured it out. I wouldn’t put it past me to have bought a rogue ring at 2am and forgotten about it.
I repeat: it’s a jungle out there. Be wary of this shit and for heaven’s sake, please help your mum, dad, grandparents and whatnot get around this shit too. I worry about my mum daily with these messages, calls and so on.
Chantelle Schmidt is a freelance writer. You can follow her on Instagram or TikTok.
