SCAM WARNING - TAKE CARE SELLING BY CLASSIFIEDS

I've has a message from a forum member today, here's an edited version of an email he got from a prospective classified buyer that raised his suspicions:

>> Thanks for the quick response about the product am buying from you, anyway the price £200 is OK by me but i will like you to know that payment will be made by Bank Draft If this mode of payment is OK by you. Kindly send your information which you will like to receive the payment from the post man, so that i can instruct my secretary to issued it immediately.I will forwarded your information to the secretary. And she confirm to me that payment will be sent to you as soon as possible. Anyway, I will assume the product has been sold to me. Also i will appreciate it if you can get the advert off the website and don't get contacted by another buyer. Anyway, payment will be sent to your Address soon. Note: The secretary will issue an excess money on the payment which would cover both the payment and shipment alongside with some goods i bought down from other locations. All you need to do, Once you cash the payment, you are to deduct your payment, afterward send the...

This is a SCAM and we have seen at least one other example of an almost identical email.

Please take care when selling to strangers in thsi way.

Also, beware of people asking you to pay by PayPal if you are buying something and they ask you to send money as a gift so they can avoid PayPal fees. A gift payment cannot be returned or claimed on PayPal insurance.

And on similar subject, I had an email today with a document attached about a 'payment' I did not recognise.

These ***** prey on people who panic when they see an unrecognised payment and worry about it.

If you open a document and it looks anything like what is below(or at all suspicious) please do not enable edit mode of macros (or macroses for that matter). If you do you will unleash a macro virus.

Neil

I get many invoices that I do not open. Even if I am expecting this sort of email I check it with Norton if I think it might be genuine. Not found a genuine one yet.

I also had an email from Lancashire police about an invoice. I checked it out as I am paying a speeding fine then realised it would be from Lincolnshire police not Lancashire. It looked exactly the same as a genuine police email and was from a genuine officer.

another thing going on is if you sell something and the buyer collects the item and has paid by paypal there is no tracking nunber and he can say the item was not there and get his money back. without a tracking number the seller is not covered by paypal

After agreeing a sale with another member on here for the Teco inverter and motor, I amended the adverts to say the items were sold. Shortly after, I received another email from someone obviously not English, asking for the price of the motor and requesting bank details so he could pay......Suffice to say it went binward straight away....Obviously couldn't read and understand the meaning of the word Sold.......

Edited By John Rudd on 18/11/2015 13:38:19

A friend runs a small internet business selling electronics. A certain party purchased goods from Australia, they were in the US.

The suggested delivery time by air post being about 2 weeks. The purchaser denied receiving the goods. At the end of exactly two weeks the purchaser claimed a no delivery refund from Paypal who promptly debited the sellers account for the shipment. A complete loss. The purchaser continues to deny receiving the goods.

Were this an isolated event you could put it down to misadventure; it is not. It has happened several times. If a purchaser complains for any reason the refund is given and it is extremely difficult to get Paypal to look into the matter. I know the seller personally and I know him to be ethical and responsible.

My friend uses Australia Post I guess the equivalent to the British post office. They don't loose parcels. Dealing over the internet is not for the feint hearted.

Regards
John

Edited By John McNamara on 18/11/2015 14:52:14

Set your email to "text only" to keep viruses at bay

There is a very easy answer to that John Mc. Only send items by a method that includes proof of delivery. Lots don't and fortunately as there are few people about that will take advantage mostly get away with it. I'm glad of that as I am an honest buyer and it keeps the costs down but increasingly people selling more expensive items insist on it being tracked. Can't say as I blame them. I often buy from the USA.

Personally when buying privately I much prefer paypal and having caught a cold a couple of times wont use bank transfer or paypal gift who ever is selling it. I also have mixed feelings about visiting and paying cash as what ever is bought it might turn out to be not as good as initial impressions suggest. I have bought a few things I don't use and wouldn't sell on for one reason or the other. It's a fact that there are more problematic sellers than buyers.

The difficult area with selling to other countries is insurance. On services that use the domestic mail provider it ceases to exist once the item has left the country. The only way round that is separate insurance or to use a carrier that operates in both countries.

John

-

I always use plain text and even then often get html back. As I run Linux and a particular email package reading an html email is a 3 stage process. 3 clicks, the last one allows it to show external references so I can pick and choose just who I let know that I have actually read it.

Personally I feel emails should standardise on rich text but the commercial aspects will never allow that. Thanks Yahoo for trying to do that on their own email service.

John

-

I sell quite a lot of stuff abroad through eBay and will only use RM tracked and signed-for service and will only accept PayPal in payment.

In many years I've only ever had one "item not received" complaint.

I responded to PayPal with a scan of the tracking proving it had reached him.

PayPal contacted the buyer and magically the item turned up the very next day!

Edited By Roger Provins 2 on 18/11/2015 18:27:19

Surely a receipt solves this one. Or have I missed something?

JA

As it was difficult to pack a digital height gauge and the buyer wasn't that far away I took it there and asked them to give me a note to say that they had received it, I had 2, the one I sold was way bigger than I need and hard to tuck away.

I do the same if some one collects from me at home as well.

One person defeated me some time ago. Sent me an empty jiffy bag with nothing in it that clearly had never been opened. I did manage to track him down via the web and certain services and did almost drive 150 miles to go and have a chat with him.

I have heard from people who sell microscope objectives that they send it and then get a return request because the buyer isn't very pleased with it and then find they get an identical one back but not the one they sent.

I bought a microscope once of some one that states no returns. It had a number of problems not shown in the photo's plus some others but listed as used. I had been warned to download the photo's in the listing and had so did the usual dispute thing. Obtained a phone number so that I could talk to him and when I did got a "don't you think you should ask if it's convenient to talk first comment" Then got told that it most definitely wasn't. There after the phone was never picked up until I rang from another number and then it was just put down at the other end. Eventually ebay/paypal sorted it out. He had changed the photo's that were shown in the listing, they keep track of changes. I eventually got an address to send it back to, not his registered address. Ebay told me that they were keen to get rid of sellers like this. He then added abuse aimed at me on all of his listings for months, I managed to get a couple of them taken down. Later I had an email off some one that had bought a car off him ................. I helped as much as I could.

Maybe it pays to be wary of listings that have photo's on them not hosted by ebay but for all I know those could be changed anyway after the listing ends.

John

-

Hi

I am new to this forum and have been advised that I need to make a post before I am able to see the details of some items I am interested in purchasing. Will this communication be acceptable?

Regards

Gerry Blyth

I don't speak on behalf of the moderators, but it might have been better to post this in the new members section, as there have been a spate of old threads resurrected of late, and it is a bit of a sore subject.

Welcome to the forum by the way

How on earth did you manage to dredge this one up?

Not exactly on the front page is it.

<Moderator test>