At this time of year courier networks come under increasing pressure due to large christmas volumes. This results in increased delays and missed collections. To maintain the excellent level of service our customers have come to expect, it is necessary for us to restrict collections from some postcode zones which are experiencing particularly extreme volumes. As of 15th December the following zones are no longer able to accept City Link collections. We recommend that you try an alternative service such as our Parcelforce 24 option:

BN1, BN3, BN5, BN6, BN11, BN12, BN13, BN14, BN15, BN16, BN17, BN18, BN41, BN42, BN43, BN44, BN45, BN99, RH1, RH2, RH3, RH4, RH5, RH6, RH7, RH8, RH9, RH10, RH11, RH12, RH13, RH14, RH15, RH16, RH17, RH18, RH19, RH20, TN7, TN8, TN16, CM6, CM7, CM21, CM22, CM23, CM24, CM77, CO5, CO7, CO11, CO16, RM1, RM2, RM3, RM4, RM5, RM11, RM12, RM14, RM15, RM15, RM16, RM17, RM18, RM19, RM20, RM50, SS0, SS1, SS2, SS3, SS4, SS5, SS6, SS7, SS8, SS9, SS10, SS11, SS17, SS99, CF31, CF32, CF33, CF34, CF35, CF36, LD2, LD3, LD4, LD5, SA1, SA2, SA3, SA4, SA5, SA6, SA7, SA8, SA9, SA10, SA11, SA12, SA13, SA14, SA15, SA16, SA17, SA18, SA19, SA20, SA31, SA32, SA33, SA34, SA35, SA36, SA37, SA38, SA39, SA40, SA41, SA42, SA43, SA44, SA45, SA46, SA47, SA48, SA61, SA62, SA63, SA64, SA65, SA66, SA67, SA68, SA69, SA70, SA71, SA72, SA73, SA99, BA1, BA2, BA3, BA4, BA5, BA6, BA7, BA8, BA9, BA10, BA11, BA12, BA13, BA14, BA15, BA16, BS1, BS2, BS3, BS4, BS5, BS6, BS7, BS8, BS9, BS10, BS11, BS13, BS14, BS15, BS16, BS20, BS21, BS22, BS23, BS24, BS25, BS26, BS27, BS28, BS29, BS30, BS31, BS32, BS34, BS35, BS36, BS37, BS38, BS39, BS40, BS41, BS48, BS49, BS77, BS98, BS99, TA8, TA9, CF1, CF3, CF4, CF5, CF10, CF11, CF14, CF15, CF23, CF24, CF37, CF38, CF39, CF40, CF41, CF42, CF43, CF44, CF45, CF46, CF47, CF48, CF61, CF62, CF63, CF64, CF71, CF72, CF81, CF82, CF83, CF91, CF99, NP4, NP6, NP7, NP8, NP9, NP10, NP11, NP12, NP13, NP15, NP16, NP18, NP19, NP20, NP22, NP23, NP24, NP25, NP26, NP44.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

It appears someone in Vietnam has decided to move from creating phishing emails purportedly coming from HSBC, HMRC, Bank of America, AOL, Amazon, The Co-operative Bank, amongst others, and have realised that most people can easily spot those. The banks have been very good at telling people about how to prevent people becoming caught out by these emails, so they’ve moved on to other web businesses. Over the last couple of days its been our turn. You can see a copy of the email below which looks to be sent out by them or using a domain name they own:

Hello,

You sent a payment of 6.87 GBP to Parcel Monkey Ltd (parcelconnect@googlemail.com)

It may take a few moments for this transaction to appear in your account.

Note:
If you haven’t authorized this charge ,click the link below to cancel transaction

Cancel/Dispute Transaction

Merchant
Parcel Monkey Ltd
parcelconnect@googlemail.com

———————————–
Postage details
The seller hasn’t provided any postage details yet.

Description: PM_326799_438729 (shipment contents: plastic table top)
Amount: 6.87 GBP
Payment sent to parcelconnect@googlemail.com

How they work is pretending the link you’re clicking on goes to the legitimate website but actually take you to a fraudulent one. To prevent yourself being caught out we suggest that you get an email which you may think is from us just to go to your web browser and type in www.parcelmonkey.co.uk and then log-in. Everything you could possibly need can be found there – including your shipping labels, refunds, contact numbers and parcel tracking.

We’ll be taking action against this individual, but rest-assured, our systems use the highest levels of security, your data is secure and we pay very close attention to account profiles for unusual activity. We would like to remind everyone that this was a fraudulent attempt against PayPal and not on ParcelMonkey ourselves – we’ll be taking the issue up with them and ensuring that they take action to the fullest extent of the law.

Resources:

• Trevox
• PayPal Community message
• Wikipedia Phishing Page
• Anti-Phishing Working Group
• Consumer Direct

We’ve witnessed a band of snow move up across northern England and Wales. It’s only been light so far so we don’t expect many, if any, issues regarding collections and deliveries. We’re informed that the snow is due to impact Ireland, Northern Ireland, the very north of England and Scotland later on today and into the evening.

It is forcecast to get down to -13c in Braemar and -7c in Perth which could feasibly cause issues.

Image ©Martin Pettitt