Is a Royal Mail or FedEx redelivery fee text a scam?
These texts are almost always phishing scams. Genuine couriers rarely charge a small fee by SMS link for redelivery, and the link leads to a fake payment page.
Last reviewed: 1 August 2026
Explanation
Parcel redelivery fee scams are among the most common phishing campaigns globally. A text arrives claiming to be from a major courier service, saying a small fee is needed to release your package. The link goes to a convincing fake website that collects your card details, which are then used for unauthorised transactions. Real courier companies do not typically send SMS messages requesting card payment via a link. If you are genuinely expecting a parcel and want to check on a fee, go directly to the courier's official website and enter your tracking number there. The fraudulent texts often arrive even when you have no package pending, relying on the fact that most people have online shopping deliveries at some point.
The branding rotates constantly — one week the texts wear one courier's colours, the next another's — because the template is shared infrastructure: phishing kits with ready-made fake pages for every major carrier are sold and rented in bulk. That is why the messages feel so polished and so interchangeable, and why blocking one sender number achieves little. The durable defence is a rule about behaviour, not recognition: parcels are checked on the carrier's site via your tracking number, never through a link that arrived by SMS.
If card details went into one of these pages, assume they are already being tested. Call your bank, have the card blocked and reissued, and review recent transactions — including tiny ones, which are often validation charges. Expect a possible second act as well: fraudsters who capture card details sometimes follow up with a phone call impersonating your bank's fraud team, using the very payment you made as their proof of legitimacy. Knowing that sequence in advance is what breaks it.
Common red flags
- You are not expecting a parcel but receive a redelivery text
- Text links to a website that is not the courier's official domain
- The fee is a small amount (under a few dollars/pounds) to seem trivial
- Website asks for full card details including CVV
- There is no real tracking number or it does not match any order
What to do now
- Do not click the link — go to the courier's official website directly
- Enter any real tracking number there to check for genuine holds
- If you entered card details, contact your bank immediately
- Report the text to your national cyber crime reporting service
Frequently asked questions
Do couriers ever charge fees by text?
Some countries do have legitimate customs-duty payment SMS services, but they direct you to official government or courier portals — not to generic payment pages with no branding consistency.
Why do these texts keep coming even after I block the numbers?
The messages are sent from constantly rotating numbers and spoofed sender IDs, so blocking has little effect. Reporting to your carrier's spam service helps network-level filtering, but the reliable protection is behavioural: never pay or log in through an SMS link.