“I bought a green house!”

“I bought a green house!”

Did I? I was incredibly confused when I received a text message on a Saturday night to tell me that my order was on its way! 

I’ve been off screens recently due to my eye, but this was something that I knew I needed to look into. I went to my computer to check and the text was right; apparently a $1,000 green house to grow plenty of beautiful plants, was on its way to my house. 

I’m not meant to be looking at any screens and here I was, left to go through the process to cancel this order I never placed. I’d been scammed. 

It made me feel incredibly vulnerable and worried about other things that I might have missed. 

I started the process of cancelling my cards as well in case they were at risk of fraud. 

About 5 days later, my agency support service through the NDIS portal seemed like I’d received a few purchases and it became a huge task to cross reference everything. Due to this scam of the green house, I looked into the invoices and saw that they charged me for a service I never received.

The whole ordeal left me feeling manipulated and double-guessing the services I received from people. This is something I feel I just need to check on more regularly now – even if it means that I have to sacrifice my eye health by looking at screens.  

Some people struggle much more than me with financial complexity and need someone to oversee their funds and keep them safe from things like this. 

This experience has made me feel really vulnerable and the domino effect that has happened from needing to cancel the order, to canceling cards to then checking on providers – it’s exhausting. It’s not a way I want to live where I feel I’m second-guessing my supports. 

How are you able to keep someone safe from scams? What are processes you can put in place to ensure this doesn’t happen to someone you’re supporting?