A south-west mobile phone business has been targeted by scammers who have been using the company’s name to advertise cheap phones across three states.
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The ads – featuring the company name and ABN - were placed in papers in northern Victoria, Sydney, Melbourne and possibly Adelaide offering iPhones and Samsung phones at unrealistically cheap prices.
Western Mobile Phones – the business name targeted - is part of the Howdy Group which operates Telstra stores in Warrnambool, Hamilton, Ararat and Horsham and is warning customers about the scam.
The company was alerted to the scam when invoices from newspapers started arriving just after Christmas, and they were contacted by a man who had already ordered a phone by calling the number listed in the ad in a Melbourne paper.
Worried his phone had not arrived, the man looked up the actual store number and called to enquire when his $500 iPhone SE would arrive.
The customer had deposited the money into an Australian bank account after refusing to place the money in a US-based account initially requested.
Warrnambool-based chief financial officer Kerrie Luciani said that so far they knew of three publications where the ads had been published and were told there was a fourth in Adelaide.
They were also contacted by a Sydney-based media group about an ad request in their company name that had originated in Florida and, realising it was a scam, that ad was never printed.
“They are advertising iPhone 7s, 6s and Samsung Galaxy, the more popular phones,” Mrs Luciani said. “We have never heard of this happening before in our industry. We are very concerned.”
She encouraged customers to go to visit their local stores and not to ring numbers that they don’t recognise as being their local store.
“There is another business that has had advertising put in under their names as well, we believe,” Mrs Luciani said.
“We’re concerned they will attempt to use one of our other business names. Our TV ads put us all in the same group, that’s why you see Ararat, Horsham, Warrnambool and Hamilton together and that’s why we’re concerned about the effect on all the sites.”
She said the company would only advertise under the Telstra store umbrella. The scam has been reported to Warrnambool police.