protect yourself from scams

Like many other legitimate companies, Animalcouriers is finding its name and branding being used by scammers. A typical scam involves promising delivery of an animal (usually a puppy, but increasingly a parrot or monkey), using Animalcouriers as the designated transporter, and asking you to pay the transport costs upfront by Western Union or MoneyGram.

what to look out for

Be wary of anyone offering you an animal, if:

• The price of the animal seems very cheap — too good to be true
• You are offered the animal for free (usually with a sob story attached), and you only have to pay for the transport
• You are offered free transport, but are asked to pay travel insurance for the animal
• The animal is coming from far away or even abroad, so it 'makes sense' to use a courier for the transport
• The website or email offering you the animal is written in poor English
• The domain names for the website and the email address don't match
• The web address ends with an unfamiliar code, like .pages.tl, rather than .com or .co.uk
• The contact details are sent from a free email service like googlemail.com
• The contact details in the email and on the website don't match
• There's no phone number for you to call and check arrangements
• You're asked to pay using a money order (like Western Union or MoneyGram), with a payment address that's a PO box (any legitimate company would invite you to pay by cheque, credit/debit card or bank transfer)
• You are told of a problem with the transport once the animal is apparently on its way to you, and you have to send more money for the animal to continue its journey, otherwise it will be put to sleep
• The animal will supposedly be delivered by Animalcouriers, but we haven't been in touch with you directly

what you should do if you think it's a scam

We don't want you to fall prey to the scammers so, if you've been promised delivery of puppy, parrot, monkey or other animal by Animalcouriers and you are in any doubt at all about the genuine nature of the offer:

• Don't make any payment
• Contact us immediately

We'll be able to tell you straight away whether anyone has booked us to deliver an animal to you. And if you detect a scam that involves our company name, please let us know, as we want to try and prevent this happening to others. You should also report it to your local police who are working to build up a profile of scammers.

This article from the Guardian on scams in general makes some further useful points and tells you about an Office Of Fair Trading campaign to raise awareness: Scam Watch: OFT launches 'scamnesty' campaign.

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