How to spot a delivery scam text
The parcel-fee text is the most common scam in the UK. Here is exactly what gives it away.
Updated 2026-09-25
You get a text. A parcel could not be delivered, and there is a small fee to pay — £1.99, £2.45, something believably trivial. There is a link. There is a deadline.
It is the most reported scam text in the UK, and it works because everybody is expecting a parcel.
The four tells
The fee is small. A scammer asking for £1,000 gets ignored. A scammer asking for £1.99 gets your card number, which is the actual prize. The amount is chosen to be beneath the threshold where you stop and think.
The link is not the company. Look at the part immediately before the first single slash. In royalmail-redelivery.secure-parcel.top/pay, that is secure-parcel.top — the brand name is just decoration bolted onto the front. Real Royal Mail links end in royalmail.com.
There is a deadline. "Within 24 hours or your parcel will be returned." Urgency exists to stop you checking with someone.
You did not arrange it. Couriers text you about parcels you are expecting. If you cannot remember ordering anything, that is the whole answer.
What to do instead
Do not tap the link, even to look — some pages harvest information just from the visit. If you are genuinely waiting for something, open the courier's own app, or type their address in yourself and use your tracking number.
Then forward the text to 7726. It is free, it goes to your mobile network's spam service, and it is how these numbers get shut down.
If you already entered your card
Ring your bank now, using the number on the back of your card. Say you entered your details on a phishing site. They will cancel the card and watch the account. Do not wait to see whether anything happens — the details get sold on and used weeks later.
Then change the password on any account where you used the same one.
The honest limitation
No tool catches all of these, and neither does any person every time. The reliable habit is not detection, it is this: never act inside the message. Leave it, go to the company yourself, and check there. A real problem will still be waiting for you.
Check a suspicious message Free, and it needs no account.