Is a text from a delivery company asking for card details to redeliver my parcel real?

Delivery redelivery card-detail requests are a consistent form of smishing. The message imitates a carrier like DHL, UPS, FedEx, or Royal Mail and says a parcel could not be delivered. To rearrange delivery you must pay a small fee by entering card details on a linked page. The page is a fake checkout that captures and stores your card number for fraudulent use. Real delivery companies offer free redelivery options through their official app or website. Where a genuine charge applies — such as customs duties — you are redirected to the carrier's official payment page, never asked for card details by SMS link.

The small size of the fee is deliberate and is the most instructive part of the scam. Nobody hesitates over a trivial amount, but the payment form captures the full card number, expiry, and security code — everything needed for much larger fraudulent charges later, or for a follow-up call in which someone posing as your bank's fraud team references the small charge to sound credible. That second-stage call is often where the real damage happens, because you half-remember the delivery payment and the story fits.

Timing does the rest of the work: these texts are sent in vast indiscriminate batches, so a proportion always lands on people genuinely waiting for a parcel. Expecting a delivery is not evidence the message is real. Keep one rule regardless of context — parcels are managed only through the carrier's app or website, reached by typing the address or using your existing app, never through a message link. If card details were entered, tell your bank immediately and treat any later 'bank fraud team' call about the incident as part of the same scam.