Morning Edition; Online Delivery Scams

It's morning edition on KRPS. Christmas is about two weeks away now and the Better Business Bureau is estimating that online purchases could grow by at least 35% this year alone. Many of us will be expecting packages on our doorsteps this holiday season. And you're likely not the only person watching your porch is either Stephanie Garland of the Better Business Bureau in Springfield, Missouri joins us this morning to talk about ways to prevent package theft. Stephanie, thank you for some of your time. My pleasure, you know, we all hate porch pirates can be very frustrating whenever somebody literally feels something off of your doorstep. So what we want for you guys to do is to try not to leave any packages that are unintended. We understand there's so many people who are hard workers and will be at work. But if there's a way that you can come home when you're lunch break, if you can have a trusted neighbor who doesn't work, stop by, a state home mom or dad, go buy and pick it up for you, or if you can even get it delivered to your office if you are in fact in the office, this might be an excellent idea for you. Also, take advantage of the online tracking services

that are offered by retailers. You're going to find that there's a lot of grapes places out there where you can go ahead on whether it's a big box store or even a local vendor and job owner, Carthage. Many times if you're having something shipped to you, they will provide a tracking number to you. And you can check exactly when it's going to arrive so that you can even potentially be there. Also, you might want to consider monitoring your front door. So if you have a home security camera system, make sure that it does capture activity at your front door mailbox. We've all seen those videos of people yelling at porch pirates. That might be an option if you have that kind of a system for the home security camera system. And of course, unfortunately, if you do see that somebody's trying to steal from you, make sure that you're saving the video and alert the local law enforcement as well as your local post-infectors. Video surveillance goes a very long way in preventing crimes and catching the bad guys. You can also make sure that you're watching for suspicious activity. Like if you're seeing people follow the delivery trucks,

if you're noticing something out of place in your neighborhood, you just got a red flag, just kind of something doesn't seem quite right. Listen to your instincts and report it to the proper authorities with specific details like the license number on that car truck. And something else I thought about while we were talking is you can order something, say Walmart, Home Depot, that kind of retailer, or even a small retailer, and instead of having a deliver to your home, having a deliver to the store, and then picking it up when you have time there. Oh, absolutely. There's a lot of places, a target, Walmart, to name a few that are doing and where you can go ahead and you do pick up, and you're actually literally in your car. And this might be an excellent way that you can go ahead and pick up whatever the item is. So we want for you guys to consider all options, but just make sure that you're getting exactly what you're shipping, because we know that this is the season of the holidays for many of us for celebrating Christmas. And we want you guys to make sure that you're enjoying this opportunity with your family and not upset because something got stolen from you. I have there been instances of porch pirates

of people stealing packages off of people's porches this holiday season in Southwest Missouri. We're having the past. We haven't had it any reported to us so far this year. Yeah, on the flip side also, we might see a decrease, although online purchases will grow. We might see a decrease in a package stuff because people are home. More people are home because of the pandemic. It's going to be interesting to see how that plays out. That's our hope. Our hope is that we're not going to have anything stolen of anybody's porch, and we're hoping that if people are working from home that they can go ahead and promptly get the packages off their porch. Anything else you'd like to add or anything on the scam tracker this week? You know, and this week we've been doing well. So we're just we're hearing from things. We have had some things that have been reported to us in terms of even yesterday. We had somebody, let me pull it up right here. We had a couple days ago, actually, excuse me. We had somebody lost $70.30 placing order online for cute shirts back in October. Yeah, but unfortunately, you know, it's December

and items haven't arrived. This person contacted these people. They created a shipping label and sent the poor quality item. And it was a counterfeit knockoff item that didn't even match the description at all. So the business that I'm used was piravita-like. So we want for people to just be very aware that this is happening. When you're looking online and again, we're seeing online purchase gams they're up the wazoo, they're numbers are way way up in this area and nationwide. So in terms of people losing money, more people than ever, losing money online. So just make sure you're doing your research. And of course, you can contact us or go to our website bbb.org to see if a site is legitimate before you make a fine purchase. Stephanie Garland of the Better Business Bureau in Springfield, Missouri. Thank you for speaking with me this morning. My pleasure, thank you.