Numerous people affected

Deceptive homepage: Fraud when buying a watch

A Carinthian wanted to order a sports watch for running - and was scammed by a criminal company.

(Bild: AP)

If you do sports, you want a watch that measures body data. When a man from Carinthia looked up models online, he was offered the best price - supposedly on the homepage of a watch store in Lower Austria. Now he is out almost 900 euros, the blocking of his credit card is making work with subscriptions.

When a man from Carinthia was looking for information about various sports watches on the Internet, he was offered the best price by a search engine - supposedly on the homepage of a watch store in Lower Austria. "The homepage looked reputable. A company URL was given, as well as an address, and there really is a watchmaker based there," says the 35-year-old, who knows his way around the internet and shopping on the worldwide web. Nevertheless, this time he fell victim to fraudsters.

I'm buying from real people in real stores again! Despite the precautions, the Internet still harbors dangers.

Kärntner Opfer von Internetbetrügern

When paying the bill of 441 euros via a payment service where the Carinthian's credit card account is stored so that the seller cannot access his bank card details, he received an error message. "That happens from time to time. If there's a technical problem, you just do it again," says the 35-year-old.

But he still hasn't received an order confirmation, instead the amount was debited twice. "And not from the company which, according to the website, is based on the lake in Lower Austria, but from a Polish account," says the Carinthian, who is now out 882 euros and, as is always the case in such fraud cases, has no contact with the supposed company.

Several complaints about the alleged company
He has of course filed a complaint. "There are several charges in the case," said a police officer from Lunz am See in Lower Austria.

Naturally, the 35-year-old also had his credit card blocked. "But you can't forget your subscriptions: Audible, Spotify, the gigabyte extension... To pay for all that, you have your credit card details on file - but it's now blocked. So I had to cancel these subscriptions, even cancel some of them, and wait for the new credit card," says the sporty Carinthian. "In future, I'll be buying from real people in real stores again!"