Harbor Freight Email Scam and Survey Contest
The Harbor Freight email scam is a fake survey contest that states you can win a 179-piece Stanley toolset for completing it. I figured I could answer the survey and see what comes of it. It was a timed survey, so I answered quickly without much thought to the questions. When it was done, there was a congratulatory screen that indicated I would need to provide my mailing address for the prize and pay the shipping fee with a button to claim the prize. I figured I would see what the shipping fee was, so I clicked the claim prize button. After entering the ZIP code, it showed an $8.98 shipping fee, so I figured that was reasonable and completed the form.
Harbor Freight Scam Surveys
This resulted in an email from the contest company thanking me for my order and wishing me good luck. This caused me to call the number in the email to ask why they were wishing me luck for something I already won and was paying a shipping fee for. They indicated it was an entry fee and I told them that is not what the form said and that I did not agree to pay to enter a contest, so I want to cancel.
They said it would need supervisor approval and put me through a couple of rounds of being on hold before I simply told them I would do a chargeback dispute through my card company. As it turns out, there were a few domain names involved but they were all "prize" or "contest" or "survey" type names.
Anyway, chargeback done, I decided to reach out to Harbor Freight to inform them of the misleading representation of their survey contest to which they responded that it was a scam they were aware of it already and further indicated that it was a phishing scam. I asked how the scammers knew I was a member and they stated that they don't sell members' information, that it was just coincidental. I told them I never got Harbor Freight related emails prior to signing up just a short whole ago so this is awful coincident. They said they would pass that on and look into it. I suggested they should notify members to which they said there is a note about it on their contact page and then said perhaps they should send out a warning email.
Not sure they meant it but thought I would post about it here and maybe prevent someone else from falling victim to it and to let you know that HF is not as customer oriented as they claim to be since they knew for weeks and did little to warn anyone.
In hindsight, clicking on the form information which showed "Harbor Freight" in the same way as past emails, did actually showed the return email address as clearly not being harbor freight.
Live and learn...
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