Delay in production *SCAM* - Mystery Solved.

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FractalAudio said:
Some of these people are not who they appear to be. We caught a couple red-handed when we traced their IP addresses to a competitor's office.
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Not just unscrupulous, but ineffective, and dumb enough to get caught too. Wow.

Now I'm super curious who that was, but I'm sure we'll never know.
 
Sounds like reverse astroturfing to ignite and spread a false narrative about FA.
That's gotta be cheaper and easier than doing real engineering LOL and building a legit product.
That competitor needs to be outed.
 
lqdsnddist said:
You’d be amazed at how much unofficial “gorilla” marketing is done by corporations these days, from social media postings, folks either schilling products on forums or review sites, or purposely bashing products of rivals, etc.

It’s not really ethical but it’s great bang for the buck. Pay someone $500 to go around all the popular sites and speak about a shortcoming, OR, spend $50,000 for an ad in a magazine most people no longer read. What’s better bang for the buck when the goal is to make a consumer not buy a rival product/choose your product.

lets face it, few people are so upset with a brand/product they will bother will creating spoof accounts, make lots of posts etc just for fun or malicious intent; got to pay someone to be worth the time to do that sort of behavior in most cases.
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Nothing surprises me when it comes to some people in marketing... (Or some commissioned salespeople.)
 
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It's likely a typical bait & fish type of email scam. Google doesn't do anything to prevent throwaway Gmail accounts from being created.

Scammers will create them and try to bait you into responding. In this case, the expected response would be anger that your unit isn't being delivered on time. They would then probably offer to jump you in the "line" for some amount of additional money.

If this seems farfetched, it's not. I regularly deal with scam emails sent to my organization asking to buy a gift card and later be reimbursed. These aren't even done programmatically by bots; there are actual criminal organizations overseas where all they do is sign up for free Gmail accounts and use them to pose as people to fulfill scams. The only thing Google can do is deal with them after the fact.

Regarding how they got your email address, it's likely somewhere in your browser and was offered up as a cookie. Or in a million other places. If you've ever signed up with that email address for a free service at any time in your life on the internet, your email is basically public, especially given how many marketing databases have suffered data compromises in the last few years.
 
if your email address included on the shipping label, it could be anyone from the delivery center to an aspiring guitarist that drives a ups truck!
thanks
pauly
 
DLC86 said:
It almost sounds like a joke.
Maybe a friend/relative who knows you're eagerly awaiting for the delivery and wanted to have a bit of fun?
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I keep a pretty tight circle of both, friends and family, none of them would find this funny at all with the amount I’ve spoken about it in the past and how far I’ve come in the last 10 years to get the point that I could order one. Aside from that, none of them are clued in about Fractal’s waitlists, which is my biggest tell that it’s someone familiar with how Fractal goes about their products.

It doesn’t seem like they were phishing, because they didn’t say anything in regards to payment info or a tracking number. Maybe they just wanted me to blow up in an e-mail and start badmouthing Fractal everywhere before I found out the truth? Whoever has the time to do shit like this needs a kick in the balls. I’ve always been a big fan of sociology/psychology and though I never went to school for it, I’ve read so much on either subject, but still fail to understand what motivates people to do ill conceived BS like this. I can understand phishing for my CC info or the tracking info to divert the packages to them, but just causing problems is a different kind of low-life BS.
 
It’s got to be someone who had access to my email before I changed the password.

The initial e-mail was sent to my regular e-mail address at 10:38PM last night, however, I did not see it until it was forwarded to my work e-mail address this morning at 10:31AM. I regularly send myself e-mails from my regular e-mail to my work e-mail, so it’s not surprising that they saw that and figured “He didn’t see it yet, this will get his attention.”

I changed my passwords on everything.
 
RevDrucifer said:
It’s got to be someone who had access to my email before I changed the password.

The initial e-mail was sent to my regular e-mail address at 10:38PM last night, however, I did not see it until it was forwarded to my work e-mail address this morning at 10:31AM. I regularly send myself e-mails from my regular e-mail to my work e-mail, so it’s not surprising that they saw that and figured “He didn’t see it yet, this will get his attention.”

I changed my passwords on everything.
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No one needs your password to send you an email. Good precaution to change it, but it's unlikely anyone had direct access to your email account.

Unless, of course, you didn't forward it to your work email? Was it forwarded from your personal email? I'd like to dig into this a bit more with you. I'll contact you privately.
 
iaresee said:
No one needs your password to send you an email. Good precaution to change it, but it's unlikely anyone had direct access to your email account.

Unless, of course, you didn't forward it to your work email? Was it forwarded from your personal email? I'd like to dig into this a bit more with you. I'll contact you privately.
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I'm just thinking they had access to my e-mail because they knew my work e-mail. That e-mail and my company's name are not listed anywhere in my social media and I've never once posted the company name anywhere online. While I hand out my business card 10x a day, it's unlikely that this occurred with someone I met in person as I literally only know 1 other guitar player through my job and I just spoke to him this morning about the ordeal, he didn't even know what an AxeFX was.
 
Man, I'm almost as pissed now as I was earlier.

My best friend sent me a text about 45 minutes ago saying "You get your AxeFX yet?", so I sent him the abridged story of how I flipped out earlier, contacted Fractal and spent 6+ hours talking with Fractal employees, changing all my passwords, having the IT guy at work look into any breaches, all while I was getting my ass handed to me at work with serious issues.

He responds with:

"Fuck bro! It was supposed to be a joke, I thought you'd hit me up immediately to tell me it was delayed. I thought it was the best prank ever. Didn't mean to stress ya out the whole day, just wanted to make ya panic for a sec and then laugh right away."

He called me and tried to explain it but I wasn't laughing. Aside from the time that was wasted on Fractal's behalf and my own, this is more than a piece of gear for me, it's the culmination of all the work I've done on myself and in my life to get to the point that I could buy one. I read off the post I made earlier when DLC86 suggested it was a friend or family member.

I'm still in disbelief he would even think this was funny. I asked him why he didn't call me or send me a text when I replied to the e-mail asking if my package was being diverted to another customer, he said "Oh, I guess I logged out of Gmail", had he called me or sent a text telling me it was him or replied to that e-mail saying "Haha you idiot, it's Nacho!" I maybe would have chuckled.

I'm truly sorry for wasting everyone's time with this. I understand his point of how he thought it'd be funny, but he missed the mark by a long shot.
 
RevDrucifer said:
Man, I'm almost as pissed now as I was earlier.

My best friend sent me a text about 45 minutes ago saying "You get your AxeFX yet?", so I sent him the abridged story of how I flipped out earlier, contacted Fractal and spent 6+ hours talking with Fractal employees, changing all my passwords, having the IT guy at work look into any breaches, all while I was getting my ass handed to me at work with serious issues.

He responds with:

"Fuck bro! It was supposed to be a joke, I thought you'd hit me up immediately to tell me it was delayed. I thought it was the best prank ever. Didn't mean to stress ya out the whole day, just wanted to make ya panic for a sec and then laugh right away."

He called me and tried to explain it but I wasn't laughing. Aside from the time that was wasted on Fractal's behalf and my own, this is more than a piece of gear for me, it's the culmination of all the work I've done on myself and in my life to get to the point that I could buy one. I read off the post I made earlier when DLC86 suggested it was a friend or family member.

I'm still in disbelief he would even think this was funny. I asked him why he didn't call me or send me a text when I replied to the e-mail asking if my package was being diverted to another customer, he said "Oh, I guess I logged out of Gmail", had he called me or sent a text telling me it was him or replied to that e-mail saying "Haha you idiot, it's Nacho!" I maybe would have chuckled.

I'm truly sorry for wasting everyone's time with this. I understand his point of how he thought it'd be funny, but he missed the mark by a long shot.
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Ooof. Well, at least your email account is safe. Enjoy that Axe-Fx III when it arrives!
 
RevDrucifer said:
Man, I'm almost as pissed now as I was earlier.

I'm truly sorry for wasting everyone's time with this. I understand his point of how he thought it'd be funny, but he missed the mark by a long shot.
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Thank you for posting that this was a buddy(?) with a really bad prank. If nothing else, this teaches us all to be vigilant.
 
RevDrucifer said:
Man, I'm almost as pissed now as I was earlier.

My best friend sent me a text about 45 minutes ago saying "You get your AxeFX yet?", so I sent him the abridged story of how I flipped out earlier, contacted Fractal and spent 6+ hours talking with Fractal employees, changing all my passwords, having the IT guy at work look into any breaches, all while I was getting my ass handed to me at work with serious issues.

He responds with:

"Fuck bro! It was supposed to be a joke, I thought you'd hit me up immediately to tell me it was delayed. I thought it was the best prank ever. Didn't mean to stress ya out the whole day, just wanted to make ya panic for a sec and then laugh right away."

He called me and tried to explain it but I wasn't laughing. Aside from the time that was wasted on Fractal's behalf and my own, this is more than a piece of gear for me, it's the culmination of all the work I've done on myself and in my life to get to the point that I could buy one. I read off the post I made earlier when DLC86 suggested it was a friend or family member.

I'm still in disbelief he would even think this was funny. I asked him why he didn't call me or send me a text when I replied to the e-mail asking if my package was being diverted to another customer, he said "Oh, I guess I logged out of Gmail", had he called me or sent a text telling me it was him or replied to that e-mail saying "Haha you idiot, it's Nacho!" I maybe would have chuckled.

I'm truly sorry for wasting everyone's time with this. I understand his point of how he thought it'd be funny, but he missed the mark by a long shot.
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Seriously? Wow, what a colossal waste of your time. Sorry that you (and the Fractal team) had to go through all that. Dumb ass prank too.
 
Just read this thread. Yea, payback will be in order... but wait for it. Till he no longer suspects... ;-)

OTOH, I'm glad to know that someone didn't phish you.
 
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You will laugh about it one day a few moments after you implement the 3x more devious counter prank. :)

I would have told him Fractal cancelled the shipment due to the concerns and unfortunately you are now moved to the back of a wait list and it could be weeks if not months. :imp:
 
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