One of the latest holiday scams involves you receiving a note on your front door that appears to come from either the United States Postal Service, UPS or Federal Express indicating that delivery of a special delivery package was attempted, but that you were not home.  You are then given a telephone number to call to arrange for delivery of the package.  Unfortunately, you are put on hold for an inordinately long time.  Even more unfortunately, the telephone number you have called is a premium number like a 900 number that carries huge charges and the longer you stay on the line, the greater the charges.

TIPS

Don’t think that merely because the number you are calling is not a 900 number that it may not be a premium number that can cost you money.  When you receive such a notice of an attempted delivery, you cannot be sure that the notice is legitimate.  The best thing you can do is to call either the United States Postal Service, UPS or Federal Express directly at a phone number that you know is accurate to follow up on the notice.  If you did not do so and you end up with huge phone charges, you can dispute the charges with your phone carrier and have them removed from your bill.