The NRLA staff received the following message from one of our members warning of a new scam in the LBM industry.
“I am writing to you because we thought it might be helpful for other dealers to hear our story.
Last week one of our sales associates took a phone order for 60 sheets of plywood to be delivered. The billing address on the credit card matched the delivery address for the material. The customer asked for a receipt to be emailed and called to follow up on the order a couple of times. Nothing seemed suspicious to the sales associate.
A week later, the charge was disputed. We called the phone number that was on the sales order and it no longer works. We sent two drivers back to the address to hopefully retrieve the plywood. When they showed up at the jobsite there was a builder there and he explained the home owner had ordered the plywood on Facebook Marketplace and had it delivered. He gave us the homeowner’s name and phone number, who was kind enough to send us screenshots of all the interactions he had with the seller. The person he paid for the plywood used the same phone number to text that the guy gave us on the sales order but had a different name.
We have reported it to the police and they are handling it from here. This was a bit different than any of the fraud we have encountered in the past. In other instances it has been much easier to detect.”
Be sure to stay up-to-date on the latest scamming trends in the LBM industry in order to protect you and your company from falling victim to scammers.
