Today I got a legitimate text message from the Apple Store indicating a change in the status of “my”order. Since this morning I happened to be checking out the trade-in prices and started an order without confirming it, I rushed to check this new “ visitor’s “ order, claiming it with my Apple ID and phone number.
It was an actual order from some guy in Iwate – I live in Kansai, and it was big: Two iPhones 15 pro, two iPhones 15 pro max, all same color all 256GB, over 72万円. Delivery was set to start from today.
I was about to ignore it but a scam alert started ringing in my head and decided to take action; after all, who buys this big without an Apple ID!
I tried calling Apple support but they were done for today. Since tomorrow I’ll be busy I decided not to risk it and cancelled the order. Sorry for the guy if it was a legitimate purchase.
Honestly, I even thought about changing the order and get it delivered to me – screw the scammer, and just return the products to Apple if it were a legitimate order and the products were claimed back; but why risk the hassle and the possibility of being accused of fraud? Although I’d like to think Apple would have just written it off, rather than risking the bad publicity of having a security hole in their store front exposed.
What do you think of it? Have you heard of any scams working this way?
Cheers.
Edit: this is the text:
ご注文（W-redacted valid order No. ）に関してお知らせがございます。
ご注文の詳細を表示：Valid Apple store URL
How screwed am I now?
5 comments
Probably input the phone number wrong.
I’ve had a scam like this before in the US, what they did was cancel my current phone and marked them as lost/stolen and called the support reps to have them resend new phones to a different address and would bill my account, they refused to answer questions on how or why it got as far as it did without verification
> legitimate text message from the Apple Store indicating
If you don’t usually get those, ignore.
Assuming this isn’t some type of scam, and I’m understanding your situation correctly, as in that you received a receipt for an order you didn’t make, shipping to a location not associated with you, there is a scenario that could result in your situation.
It’s possible that someone bought them in-store and had them shipped out for whatever reason (gifts maybe, or certain models/options were not available in-store). Store clerk will ask for your phone number and/or e-mail to send a digital receipt. There could have been a clerical error on the intended recipient of said receipt.
4 phones could easy just be a family upgrading all their phones at once, which is very common. As for not having an Apple ID, it’s possible the family is coming over from Android and don’t have an Apple ID yet.
Assuming the phone number is linked to your said Apple ID, Apple could have just linked the two together since your phone number is on your Apple account, but the purchaser wouldn’t even know your ID in the first place.
So I don’t know about ‘changing the address on the order so you get it instead’, which sounds like it could be treated as theft?
Either way, I could only offer a possible scenario, so who knows what’s actually going on. If you want to know what’s going on, calling Apple and explaining the situation seems like the best course of action.
I received similar messages in the past few weeks too but hadn’t done any purchases of any kind from Apple. Ignored them as I reckoned they were scam messages.