I just got scammed today, the tracking number provided however was from USPS. My story: In the wee hours of July 15th, I purchased a portable hand washing sink (for camping ) from a sketchy website that I realized after the fact is most likely a fly by night shady website setup up to lure and rip off unsuspecting buyers. The item in question is manufactured by a company located in the united kingdom, I am located in the United States. The company who makes this product did not offer international shipment to the USA and a lot of their products including the item I wanted was out of stock and only available for back orders, mostly likely due the the covid pandemic. I google the item for sale and found a website offering it at almost 40% off MSRP. They offered international shipping, this was the first red flag as it was fishy that the manufacturer had no stock and a product that should be in high demand was selling here for less than what the manufacturer had it listed for. The 2nd red flag: when I attempted to checkout using my credit card it triggered a fraud alert and even after I green lighted the transaction through my credit card company all other attempts to pay for the product via my credit card was declined. I chalked it up to my credit card company was simply flagging the purchase because it was a foreign merchant etc. This is the point where I should have let things be but there was a PayPal payment option and I figured PayPal is usually a safe bet for buyers when it comes to scammers so I push through with the payment via paypal. The 3rd red flag, The website was presented as a UK entity, all currency on the website was in UK pounds yet while making the payment via PayPal the receiver's name was listed in chinese characters. I then googled the company and could find zero information pertaining to any reviews or mentions of this website whatsoever. Dread finally set in and I called PayPal first thing later this morning to voice my concerns about a possible fraudulent scenario with this merchant... I was told nothing could be done until my pending payment went through. I also emailed the seller (hotmail.com email, how professional ) asking for an estimated shipping date for my order as the order confirmation did not have this information I still haven't heard back from the seller. About 20 minutes after emailing them I received a PayPal email confirming shipment of my order, I clicked on the tracking number attached to the paypal email and my heart did flip flops. The USPS tracking number showed a shipment that went out on July 9th!!!! 7 days before my order was even placed. Tracking also showed the item delivered to somewhere in my zip code on July 13th. My order was placed around 2am today, July 15th. I am so disgusted with myself for not doing my due diligence and googling this website first before putting my personal information in the hand of scammers and possibly losing my hard earned money on this transaction. I have already filed a claim with paypal since the seller uploaded tracking and the tracking already shows item delivered. I am still baffled as to how the scammer had access to a tracking number that showed tracking on an item shipped to my zip code. They **bleep** up though since the tracking shows a shipment that was sent out a week before I even placed an order and also delivered 2 days before my order date.
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