WE ARE not always to blame when online sprees go wrong. Some online shoppers can’t be trusted too.

Spree organisers told The New Paper that some participants try to trick them into thinking that they have paid for their orders.

That was what happened to tertiary student Hazel Peck, 25. She said one shopper tried to pass off another customer’s fund transfer as her own last November.

“She copied one of my regular customer’s (transaction number) and pasted it in her own order.”

Both transactions were of the same value: $55.

Spree shoppers must show proof that they have transferred the money for the purchases made to the organiser.

So they either post the transaction reference number – or a scanned copy of the ATM receipt – on the spree website.

By the time Miss Peck found out about the ruse , it was too late – all the items had already been shipped to Singapore.

Miss Peck said: “I sent her some e-mails asking for payment but she ignored them.

“One day, I threatened to report her to the spree community administrators, and she responded immediately.”

The shopper urged her to mail over the items, but Miss Peck refused.

She said: “She said she had already received payment from her customers who had bought the items she had ordered in my spree. She put the items up for sale on her own website.

“She wasn’t just out to cheat me. She wanted to make a profit out of it.”

Enraged, Miss Peck reported her to the administrators and posted her details on the website.

More organisers then revealed that the shopper had used the same ruse on them, Miss Peck added.

One of them, Miss Valerie Cheng, 24, a computer programmer, was verifying the payments she received when she noticed that the shopper had posted a transaction reference number of an order that had already been acknowledged a day before.

When Miss Cheng did a Google search of the shopper’s nickname and e-mail address, she found negative comments about her on spree community websites.
Miss Cheng stopped her order.

Miss Peck said the shopper’s family has since helped her pay the sum, and she is now more careful.

For instance, she does not accept unpaid orders anymore, even from regular customers.

Another spree organiser, Miss Lina Tan, 26, said she looks out for “high-tech” scammers.

“They digitally edit other customers’ scanned ATM receipts such that we cannot detect something is amiss,” she noted.

Sprees are popular with Singaporeans, especially during seasonal sales overseas. As many as 200 people participate in a spree at any one time.

Usually, apparel and footwear from famous foreign brands like Forever21 and Urban Outfitters are highly sought after.

This article was first published in The New Paper.