Hard lesson learned: Re-up PIN Fraud

**fsnertz** · 02-06-2012, 03:21 PM

Soon after the holidays, I performed a search on products.google.com looking for a good deal on re-up PINs for my Simple Mobile service.

I found a site that was offering the PINs "on sale" at a 25% discount. I purchased one and applied to my account. No problems. Figuring it was a great deal, I went back a couple days later and purchased another to cover February as well as January.

Today, I discovered that my Simple Mobile service had been unilaterally suspended on account of a credit card chargeback to a card that wasn't mine, in response to "the cardholder reporting the transaction as fraudulent", according to the SM rep I spoke with. The PINs I was provided were somehow tied to the chargeback.

In short, it appears that the "store" I purchased the PINs from was trafficking in stolen eGoods. They purchased PINs using stolen CCs, then sold the PINs online at a discount to suckers like myself, then pocketed the proceeds from the sale.

The "store" was a DIY storefront provided by ecrater.com. I clicked through to the site from the products.google.com search results, and completed the transaction on the ecrater.com site.

As of today, the http://pindiscount.ecrater.com/ site is still up, but lists no PINs for sale.

I have contacted SM's corporate resolution line. They were willing to re-enable my account if I supplied a valid PIN from a reputable seller. They suggest PinZoo.com as a reputable source of re-up PINs. I did, and they did. But I am effectively still out $30 ($40 less 25% discount) until I can get resolution from either (a) the original vendor (yeah, sure, right), (b) eCrater.com (ditto), or (c) PayPal.com (a slow go).

Needless to say, I will now only purchase PINs from reputable outlets (such as PinZoo), or use a credit card directly to re-up on the SM site.

Please consider my warning. Thank you.

**nicraz** · 02-07-2012, 11:59 AM

I'm sorry to hear that. I'm pretty new to SM and their reps on Facebook recommended PinZoo when I asked for help because website was giving me problems to reup (3 different cards denied not sure why). Since then, I've been using PinZoo or CallingMart. They are both legit and I can use my PayPal account to purchase my minutes.

**manofstill2012** · 02-09-2012, 01:40 AM

This same scam has been going around for an long time, and especially on ebay that when I found out about it, I brought an gophone refill and 3 weeks later had my service turned off due to the same problem, if it's to good to be true then it is.

Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk

**Scottish Skyedance** · 02-19-2012, 02:10 PM

Wirelessly posted (HTC Nexus One: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_7; en-us) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/530.17)

Pinzoo and Callingmart are reliable according to my experience.

**fsnertz** · 02-19-2012, 04:13 PM

I had paid for the PINs via PayPal. Given all the nastiness I'd heard about PayPal, I was skeptical that they would be of much help in recovering my funds.

I issued a complaint via PayPal at the same time I posted the OP here.

Today, the day after the seller failed to respond in the time allotted, PayPal notified me that they would issue a credit to me for the full amount of the sale.

Once bitten, twice shy - I will get future PINs via CallingMart, PinZoo and the like. But I'm pleased PayPal stood by their word.

**nicraz** · 02-20-2012, 04:37 PM

I'm happy to hear that. I use PayPal quite frequently and even though I haven't had problems so far, I know there are ways for you to file complaints.

**Pabster** · 02-21-2012, 12:19 AM

PayPal won't question a $30 transaction much. It costs them more to have a human actually take a look at the case than to just issue a credit and be done with it. If it were $300 it would be a different story. Don't put much faith in PayPal; they often rule in your favor and then say they couldn't recover the $ from the phony seller so you are still out. Just saying from past experiences.

It's always been a good idea to only deal with reputable sellers. PinZoo and CallingMart are two I can certainly vouch for. Bought PINs many, many, many times over the last few years from both and never had a single issue with either. Stay away from the scammers. If it sounds too good to be true...it is.