Very Suss ebay message ----> scam

[mrfordfairmont]

i had this sort of thing and they sent me a cheque and banked it and the bank picked it up as a scam and a fake cheque

[XB GS 351 Coupe]

Originally Posted by FgNewbie

Speaking from past knowledge.

PayPus has been known to freeze access to your PayPal account funds so they can recover money. If you are a low volume seller you can work around this before your next sale.

If you are a high volume seller you are stuffed. PayPal will effectively keep any payments into your account until they have recovered what they want and they expect you will still send the goods you don't get paid for.

So you don't send the goods, the buyers eventually get their money back, your feeBay rep gets trashed.

I remember in 2007-08, a powerseller did continue to send the goods (before he froze sales) and fought PayPal for about 10k which he eventually got back. It was a massive task on his part.

This is the reason I have it set up the way I do, I never have money in Pay Pal to freeze, if someone pays for something I transfer the money from pay pal to my internet account, the minute I see the money in my account, I will transfer it out of my linked account to my personal bank account and will then post the item the same day. I have the money and buyer now has the product.

If people pay via direct deposit they get their item a lot faster as they do not have to wait the extra 3 days for the money to make it to my account.

[anolade]

yeah heaps scammers out there but a lot will use the @gmail.com <---- instant warning sign before u read the email. I see them a lot on online games and such 90% of time they use the @gmail.com email address

[sudszy]

Originally Posted by XB GS 351 Coupe

This is the reason I have it set up the way I do, I never have money in Pay Pal to freeze, if someone pays for something I transfer the money from pay pal to my internet account, the minute I see the money in my account, I will transfer it out of my linked account to my personal bank account and will then post the item the same day. I have the money and buyer now has the product.

If people pay via direct deposit they get their item a lot faster as they do not have to wait the extra 3 days for the money to make it to my account.

I agree, only way to do business on ebay. I had one buyer tell me I was being paranoid, money in paypal was the same as money in the bank!

Well no its not, Paypal is not even a registered business in Australia, if they go belly up, good luck!

and the time they take to transfer it to our bank accounts, 3-4 days, multiply that on the short term money market by the number of people that get payments through paypal + their 2% commission....

[fordman302]

i placed to items for sale on the trading post a couple of weeks back and had attempted scams on both, what the did was say they were working on an oil rig and could only pay via paypal, i was suss from the start and told them they only needed my paypal details which most would know if just your email address, anyway i went along with the first one to see which way it would go, when asked to confirm the price on the secod item which was eleven grand i told them 58 grand which the apparently had no problem with, anyway the way thier scam works is they actually send an email from a fake paypal email address which is pretty easy to pick up on, they then apparently include shipping costs for the amount that you then have to transfer to a dodgy address via western union to then release the funds from "paypal" only people that arent really switched on would be caught out. I had some fun and took up some of thier time, they went from apparently buying a car, to a jet ski, to a boat, to a truck and then onto a corpse of a person who had tried to scam me, they gave up after that

[rjk74]

I'm always amazed a the amount of sellers on ebay trying to pass off falcon 500s as a GT or cars that look like GTs but have no compliance plates.

[XB GS 351 Coupe]

Originally Posted by sudszy

and the time they take to transfer it to our bank accounts, 3-4 days, multiply that on the short term money market by the number of people that get payments through paypal + their 2% commission....

Agreed, and I have been told that Pay pal is owned by Ebay, and that all funds go through Swiss bank accounts, and as such can not be traced or followed up on.

It appears that all profits made by Pay Pal and E bay also remain in Swiss bank accounts and as such no tax is payed on any of the huge profits made

[EB#]

I'd expect these scam emails are sent hundreds, maybe thousands of times every day
across all online sales sites........ nothing new here.

[aussie muscle]

Originally Posted by xc4me

e-mailed him back saying you can do it all through eBay and he has just replied with this:
-----------------
Hi,

I do not have an Ebay account and do not wish to open one. Kindly send me a paypal payment invoice so i can effect payment to you asap

Cheers
Bruce
------------------

That's suss because you have to have an Ebay account to email sellers now.

[FgNewbie]

Originally Posted by aussie muscle

That's suss because you have to have an Ebay account to email sellers now.

Unless you include / promote an email address in your listing.
Some sellers provide one to enhance customer service.
Others may provide one to help circumvent fees.

Not to mention the ones that used to include an email address because 'My Messages' was unreliable. Don't know if it's any better these days.

Did the OP include one?

Another one of eBay's twisted policies.
Guests can Buy It Now but not ask seller a question.
http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/buy/buying-as-guest.html

[FgNewbie]

Speaking of scams. If you accept PayPal payment for a pickup, last I knew, the buyer could claim they didn't receive the goods and you have no proof of shipment. Unless they have ammended the policy (I can't find a change), scammer gets money back and keeps the goods.

Depending on what you are selling (for pickup), don't accept PayPal or sight their drivers licence and hope it's real.

[Jim Goose]

Reversal of money sent by PayPal scam artists is very low on the list of ways to do things...

The common ones are that they send you too much money, for instance you wanted $5000 for your car and they send you $5500. The ask you to send the $500 to their broker or who ever is picking up the car on their behalf.
You send the $500 to the person they tell you. The cheque you were sent is then found to be fake. Or....
They send a fake PayPal email saying you have $5500 and most people simple dont bother to check their account and send the "extra" money in cash to the broker or whoever.

The scam artist ISNT after your car... and will never be interested in your car.

[JG66ME]

I have reported about 2 to 3 dozen frauds on eBay that got pulled immediately. All where for large $60k plus tractors, supposedly in Aus. All had UK or German number plates. Some of the tractors that where "located" in Queensland with snow on the ground. That was another giveaway.

[FgNewbie]

Originally Posted by Jim Goose

Reversal of money sent by PayPal scam artists is very low on the list of ways to do things...

The common ones are that they send you too much money, for instance you wanted $5000 for your car and they send you $5500. The ask you to send the $500 to their broker or who ever is picking up the car on their behalf.
You send the $500 to the person they tell you. The cheque you were sent is then found to be fake. Or....
They send a fake PayPal email saying you have $5500 and most people simple dont bother to check their account and send the "extra" money in cash to the broker or whoever.

The scam artist ISNT after your car... and will never be interested in your car.

Western Union was previously their weapon of choice, PayPus just made it easier.

JG I don't know the stats, whether reversals / chargebacks are low, it still hurts when an individual gets screwed by the system for thousands. Used to happen too often.

I'm not arguing the point, just fed up with the PayPal system.

[Jim Goose]

Yes i know, PayPal is expensive enough....

But if one follows a few simple rules on eBay its relatively safe.
Make sure the person you deal with has a very high feedback count.
Not to mention a very high positive feedback count..

If you use PayPal, direct the money into your bank account ASAP.
Or Use direct deposit, COD, MO or Bank cheque.. and just make sure the money clears before you send anything!

If the deal is too good to be true.. then it probably is!
If the person doesnt want to pay you in the fashion you want and insists on doing their way because they cant do it another way, report them and cancel the transaction.

[dannyxm]

Ha i am trying to sell my LTD see sig below.

Its on Ebay and i go this from a 'prospective purchaser'

thanks for the mail... i would have loved to transact on phone but am
currently in the camp as i am a Navy Captain so its a bit hard to call
you right now because calls are been restricted. we can as well
complete the transaction on here so can you let me know your asking
price so i can make a good offer. you can also send more pictures if
you have. thanks..

In the Navy indeed..........

[Jim Goose]

hahahaha navy captain!!! in charge of what? a rubber duckie?

[sanchoXB]

A good idea if you are selling something on a website is to add a watermark to your photos. I had a car for sale on ebay a while back and a few weeks after it ended I spotted it on there again, a scammer had copied the photos and posted a new ad with a low price. Since then I always have a watermark.

[hiper]

im probably a little more tech savvy that the regular internet user.
i sign up to forums etc with an email account that doesnt actually exist (its real, but gets forwarded to another mailbox)
ive got a couple of real mailboxes and only respond to mail via these real mailboxes.

this way it is EASY to see if it is a scam mail because they will have sent it to a real address rather than the virtual address i signed up to the site with.

for the tech savvy: buy a domain. get it hosted somewhere cheap and use a catchall address. then just sign up to a site with sitename@yourdomain and only that site knows that address.

[FgNewbie]

Originally Posted by sanchoXB

A good idea if you are selling something on a website is to add a watermark to your photos. I had a car for sale on ebay a while back and a few weeks after it ended I spotted it on there again, a scammer had copied the photos and posted a new ad with a low price. Since then I always have a watermark.

I'm surprised they didn't link directly to your original image. That's when you replace the original with something nasty, they have no control over it

Alternatively, on eBay you can get their listing pulled.

Unfortunately watermarks predominately affect your buyers. If someone really wants your image, watermarks get covered or photoshopped. If your watermark is too hard to remove, it has probably stuffed the appearance / saleability of your image / item too. I looked on google for a good reference but there are too many pages including instructions on how to remove watermarks.

Some people disable right click to try and protect their images. Without looking for the image in your browser's temp folder or doing anything fancy, a simple screen capture beats it. Coding to disable right click only succeeds in annoying some people that like to use it for other reasons. Eg open a link in a new window.

[toothless]

i got one of those 3 years ago as well and i wasn't selling anything on ebay

[Kable72]

^ apparently so did the rest of the guys in the thread.

[OzJavelin]

Any mention of the word "overseas" in a ad text or a response to an ad and I'd run a mile:
Selling: "Must sell, moving overseas" = it's dodgy and once I've got your money you wont find me.
Buying: "Working overseas, I'll wire you the money, send your email address" = Yes I'm working overseas .. trying to scam you.

[tex]

I've had interest from aid workers in Africa, a sailor serving on board a British submarine, and the most recent an Australian working on a gas platform in the Bering sea.
Common denominator is PayPal, collection by a third party agent, and agreeing to pay the asking price without negotiations.

I had fun with them all

[Ducati888]

If they text you using a hidden number it's definitely a scam. Who would do that? If they can't share a phone number with you, then you don't do business. Doesn't matter who they are. End of story.

[EASYBOSS]

Nice 2 year thread mine, what is it with thread mining something like this

[stevethepom]

I had an Email with virtually the same wording last year when I was selling an antique Potbelly woodheater that I had restored and was trying to sell on Gumtree they even asked me for registration details and if there were any incumbrances to be cleared before final payment and also whether it ran on unleaded or diesel I told them it was powered by a Fusion Atomic Reaction Turbine or F.A.R.T for short ! needless to say I didnt make the sale to them .