Let's talk about late fees

[GeauxHomeLittleD]

Tis the season.

Two days ago I had a charge on my account from Amazon. I only use Amazon about 4 or 5 times a year. So I was immediately on alert. I too went the online route at first, and too, was not satisfied with the results.

I made the pesky phone call and if took a few minutes, but the lady that answered the phone sounded American. It took a hot second to find out the problem, and they fixed it right away, though I never found out how that "Prime" charge got there in the first place.

Less than 24 hrs later I got a suspicious email from Amazon claiming that they needed to check my account and it had a box in the middle saying "Click Here".

Not on your life.

I called Amazon again. They asked me to forward the email to them. Which I did. They checked, and my account had not been compromised, but a phishing scheme was in play.  Of course they told me to never click on anything in those emails, and to notify them right away, a pure case of preaching to the choir.

People can grump about Amazon all they want but I've never had anything but great service from them and problems are rare. In fact their delivery (they have their own drivers here) is by far the most reliable of all- USPS, UPS, FedEx and DHL cannot hold a candle to them!

E-mail scams are a growing problem. Never click on a link from any e-mail you receive- go directly to their website yourself and log in to check for problems. Scammers are counting on the fact that if the e-mail looks enough like an official one from an actual business people will click without thinking and unknowingly give away their log in information. I know too many older folks who have had to learn the hard way, very sad!