Is Postmates Safe?: Here Are the Postmates Scams to Watch Out For and Avoid

A few years ago, working part-time meant nothing more than working as a grocery store worker or at the gas station. But, after apps became more popular and everyone started relying on their phone, opportunities of a new kind arose. Currently, there are countless ways online to make money, and one of them is to become a Postmates driver. However, is Postmates safe?

Postmates drivers make a relatively decent buck by delivering customer orders to their door, but it’s not all rainbows and roses. One of the worst things you can face as someone working hard to earn their money is to become the victim of a scam, yet that’s what’s happened to countless Postmates drivers.

Let’s talk about some of the most common scams that Postmates employees have had to face recently.

Is Postmates Safe?: The Types of Postmates Scams and How They Work

Is Postmates safe? Many cybercriminals spend a lot of time trying to figure out ways to scam people for their money. Recently, they’ve begun conning even the average delivery person out of their hard-earned money. Most scams happen during the weekend when the drivers have the most money waiting to be deposited into their banks, and this is how they operate.

Customer Service Scam

A scammer will place an order with the Postmates app, and then make note of the driver’s phone number. They didn’t want the food — this number is what they were really after. After they get your number, they will call you and pretend to be a Postmates official representative.

Scammers will also use phone number masking technology to make their number appear as that of Postmates, and then ask you for your login details. Soon, you get a notification telling you that your payment details have changed, your account has been disabled, and all your money is now theirs.

Customer Scams to Watch Out For!

There are many other ways for Postmates drivers to be scammed, and they include customers claiming their order wasn’t delivered, even after you handed it off to them personally. Many customers also order from a place nearby and pick it up themselves, leaving you to aimlessly wait around the restaurant for food that has already been picked up. Some scammers even try to bait you into giving your information up through phishing emails and text messages, so be careful what links you click on.

In all these cases, it’s a good idea to document everything and contact Postmates support immediately. You can’t get any help if you don’t tell your side of the story, so document and record everything, and be careful!

Is Postmates Safe?: How To Spot or Avoid Postmates Scams

Postmates Head of Delivery Communications, Meghan Casserly, has detailed a lot of ways you can identify a phishing scam in an interview with Gizmodo. She says that Postmates regularly advises its drivers to stay on their toes and provides information and resources to help them identify these scams. Some of the tips she shared are as follows:

• If there is ever any suspicious change in your banking information or your password, Postmates will never tell you this on a call. It will always be via their official monitoring mechanisms through email.
• Postmates will never ask for your banking information, your login information, or a code texted to your phone.

What To Do If You’ve Been Scammed

If you’ve been the victim of a Postmates scam, the first thing you should do is contact Postmates support immediately. They claim that they do have measures in place to reimburse the losses of any drivers who can prove that they were scammed, so it’s worth a shot.

You can even file a report with the police and have them investigate the matter. A week’s earnings may not seem like enough to go through all this trouble for, but these scammers target various drivers at once and amass a hefty amount by cheating them out of it.

Social Catfish is Here to Help You!

At Social Catfish, we want to help you verify the identities of those who might seem suspicious to you. If you have their name, email address, phone number, social media username, or image, you can reverse search and see who the suspected person was that you’ve been in contact with after reading about “is Postmates safe?” If you were involved in a scam, make sure to report it to the FTC as well.