I like to think I am quite streetwise and not the sort of person to get caught about by a scam, but yesterday proved that anyone could get caught out and I nearly fell for one.
I have fallen out of love with eBay due to problem buyers, over-priced postage and charges and have started using Gumtree more and more to sell any unwanted / outgrown items.
Yesterday I listed Sebastian’s stage 0 carseat and isofix base as he no longer needs it and I was surprised when I got a text message within 10 minutes of listing it asking if I could email them with all the details.
I did this and was surprised when they replied immediately offering me the full price + £10 extra as they were not local and wanted a courier to pick it up. I thought it was odd, but didn’t think anymore of it at the time, just excited that it had sold and we were getting some room back in the house.
Minutes later I receive this email which appeared to be from paypal. At first glance it looked genuine but I did think it was odd that the buyer had added a postage and expected me to pay the courier, so I did reply questioning it.
The reply I got from the buyer only made me confused and by this time I was starting feel stressed as nothing was making sense.
Alarm bells were starting to ring in my head and another email from paypal switched a lightbulb on in my head!
The email states that I do NOT have access to the credit in my account until I PAY the shipping company to come and collect the order. I did email back questioning this as how can I pay for something when I don’t have access to the funds and I got this reply:
At no point was a shipping company mentioned which I also found odd and then low and behold, I get an email requesting money for the shipping of the carseat.
The shipping company was based in Nigeria!!
No wonder shipping was so expensive lol.
They wanted me to make a money transfer to Western Union Bank of £80. Obviously paypal payments are traceable and they investigate fraud so this convinced me 100% that this was a scam. I went back to see what else I could find.
The paypal emails looked genuine, but I do get scam paypal emails quite regularly and they are easy to identify by the email address, so I looked through my genuine paypal emails and compared the address.
I checked my paypal account for held funds, but as you will probably have guessed there were none there, so I emailed and challenged the scammer, but funnily enough I have had no response.
When I tweeted about the incident it seems I am not the first to be scammed in this way and the lovely Danni from squishblog pointed me in the direction of her post on the matter.
I don’t know who they target, but a frazzled mum not paying attention like me selling baby stuff might give them a better chance of making money.
Please, be careful when selling stuff online – if an offer seems too good to be true, it probably is!!
There are some awful people out there. Glad you highlighted this scam so that other people aren’t caught out.
Oh my days, you were so lucky to catch that!
I love Gumtree and use it a lot more the eBay and I have a better success rate of selling items on Gumtree too.
Great informative post.
Wow it’s good that you checked because those emails looked genuine!
It’s a shame. I am disillusioned with eBay due to being messed about by buyers saying the item mysteriously ‘broke’ or went ‘missing’ in the post. I heard on The Guardian about one person who sold a playstation and the buyer claimed the box was empty when they received it. And Paypal and eBay sided with the buyer as they ALWAYS do so the seller was down a whole £300ish for a lost playstation.
I would like to see more consumer affairs type posts I enjoyed this post (though I do not enjoy your misery in being almost tricked of course!)
Gulp this is awful! Truly horrendous. It would have been so easy to be duped by this – especially because it’s a relatively small amount of money, so people might not be too vigilant. Good on you for investigating, and for sharing this!
oh god thats scary! cheeky sods good job you checked and thanks for sharing
What a horrible situation.
Well done for catching it.
I wish there was a way to stop people like this from scamming the innocent.
I have a paypal e-mail address so a lot of my spam goes to more know addresses, BUT these paypal scam ones are really good. I never ever click anything from the e-mails themselves and always go straight to the website. I am glad you noticed and they didn’t get away with anything. Have you reported them?
It makes me so angry that so many scammers are out there and becoming more slick with their frauds. As an owner of a holiday cottage we get attacked from both sides as it were:- fraudulent companies trying to get us to advertise on sites that do not exist and/or provide no enquiries, bogus holiday makers trying to pay us with dodgy cheques and hackers accessing our accounts on advertising agencies and intercepting our booking enquiries. I hope that I would always clock a scam but that said I have something in my inbox at present that I am unsure as to whether it is genuine or not … I’m off to see what google and a forum I use think about it. I am so glad you didn’t fall for this one but it makes you realise no website is safe. I’ve written about some of this this in the blog I have linked to below.
How awful, I can’t believe people get away with this, it is just wrong x
I’m so glad that you realised that this was a scam before you lost any money. I am amazed at the lengths people will go to to trick innocent people.
I’m glad you didn’t get caught out by this scam, it would have been far to busy to not notice though, especially after a long night with the kids
Thank goodness you questioned it and found out about the scam. I had someone from Nigeria try to scam me out of a mobile phone I was selling on eBay a few years back. I can’t stand people who try to do this.
Glad you didn’t get caught out, and it’s great that you’ve highlighted this for others. I think the wording of the first couple of messages would have put me off – but like you said, if you’re feeling frazzled or stressed, then you might bypass it. Thankfully PayPal was able to alert you to it with their fraud email.
Just reading your email exchange with them made my head hurt! It’s so confusing and I guess that’s the idea to confuse you and get you to just go along with it. How awful, when obviously you’ve got young children to target you. Thanks for the tips though, will definitely be careful.
Oh yikes, I am glad you sussed them out and didn’t loose any money! Shared it on my Page, to warn others!
That is just horrid. I was just beginning to think of using on-line selling websites, but you have given me cause to rethink. Glad you had this figured and didn’t get scammed.
I’m so pleased you didn’t get caught out. That is just despicable.
Had the same thing happen to me this morning, within 10 mins of posting my item I had two sms messages,saying consider it sold, she would give me the full asking price,also telling me she was disabled and nearly deaf and she was buying for her cousin, she pointed out that because of her disability she was unable to fetch the item herself or unable to get cash from the banks, but would send a courier and she would pay by paypal, when I pointed out that I didn’t have a paypal account she sent me the link so that I could join, that started the alarm bells ringing, and when I said it was a cash on collection she disappeared never to be heard of again.