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Is this a scam?

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Mikii

Joined
23 August 2007
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Hey fellas,

To cut the story short, i advertised my car on carsales and got a reply from this guy.... i just cant believe this is coming from carsales.

Thanks for the prompt response.. I am ready to buy it for my uncle and i am at sea at the moment as i am a marine engineer and due to the nature of my work, phone calls making and visiting of website are restricted but i squeezed out time to check this advert and send you an email regarding it. I really want this car to be a surprise for my uncle so i wont let him know anything about the car until it gets delivered to him, i am sure he will be more than happy with the car. Due to the nature of my work i am a very busy man working all day.i wont be able to come for inspection but all i really need from you is to be sure that the car is as describe online and if you can send some more pictures(engines inclusive) .i have gone through what you wrote on the advert and i am really satisfied with its condition I insisted on PayPal because i don't have access to my bank account online as i don't have internet banking, but i can pay from my PayPal account, as i have my bank a/c attached to it, i will need you to give me your PayPal email address and the price so i can make the payments asap for the car and

please if you don't have PayPal account yet, it is very easy to set up, go to www.PayPal.com.au and get it set up, after you have set it up i will only need the e-mail address you use for registration with PayPal so as to put the money through. have a pick up agent that will come and pick the car up after i have made the payments...i will be waiting to read from you.

But the scam is in reverse now, He is the buyer not us. and he no longer lives in nigeria, His on his way to australia and need a little bit more funds to reach here !!!!

LOL
 
It's a known scam. Don't even bother returning any call back. Again, when something somes too good to be true...run
 
Yep definite scam. A friend got an almost identical reply a while back when trying to sell his car.
 
Let me get this right...

The scam involves the buyer offering to pay by paypal... then asking the seller for money for some reason?

Or is it just the paypal transaction offer the scam?
 
Yeah a definite scam, I know multiple people that have been targeted. I am surprised they haven't tried something new by now
 
nunthewiser - he wants my pay pal email address so he can send me his money.

But we know he wants the pay pal email address so he can hack into it or something.

I'v heard of scams asking for us to make payments, but not asking us for them to pay us lol. its different now.

Im suprised that they are on carsales now, theyr all over the place!
 

cheers.
 

I don't like reading word jumbles like this with poor punctuation to boot. However, I can't find where the seller pays the purchaser money.

Giving the email address seems to be legit with PayPal for people sending money - https://cms.paypal.com/au/cgi-bin/m...er-content&content_ID=marketing_au/send_money

I would also be very suspicious with such an email, however, I can't see where the seller is at risk. The money comes into his account and said car gets picked up.

What have I missed in that jumble of words - lol ???
 
He wants your paypal email address so he can send u a fake "money received" notification. I bet if you give him a email that is not attached to any paypal account you will get a email notification with spelling mistakes ofcourse that funds have been received.

Or he might try a charge back paypal scam, after the car is picked up and u try cash the funds he raises a paypal dispute saying he did not get the car or its broken etc etc

If you are brave and want to waste his time go along with it and when the courier or whoever comes to pick up the car tell them it has not been paid for, then the scamer will be stuck with the bill. But safest is just to ignore it

p.s paypal is probably the most unsafe way to sell things thesedays, they have power to pretty much freeze your money, reverse transactions and ask you to provide receipts, credit card statements etc. There is nothing you can do once your money if frozen as paypal is not a banking organization and does not have to comply to banking laws
 
Thanks guys I use paypal a fair bit for overseas buying.

Havent had any problems yet with Paypal but only have a prepaid debit visa account attached to it which i place the right amount of cash in for the transaction each time.

Thanks for the information.
 
Paypal is good for buying, especially from overseas.

The problem is when you are receiving funds to your paypal, especially larger sums. The balance has to clear to your bank or credit card first, within this period if the money is frozen, reversed or refunded there is very low chances of speedy recovery, most cases go instantly in favour of the buyer as like with all credit card charge backs.

Say even once the money does clear into your account, bigger sums lets say 10k or 20k thats fine, but after if the buyer decides to notify paypal that they are not happy with the purchase or have not received it paypal will put your account in negative and ask you to give the money back while they investigate. Most people would just ignore this and say im not putting nothing back my item is sold bad luck. However with larger transactions of a few thousand paypal will no doubt try to recover the money through debt collectors etc which is a headache.

Now compared to making a sale through bank transfer, cash, you would never even hear about such obstacles, so dont bother receiving large sums of money through paypal.

Also this is a typical scamer story, they are always in a place that is hard to reach, limited communication and seeking to buy a gift urgently. nobody buys car for a gift without inspection, if they are that rich not to care and take "your word" then they can afford a brand new car.
 
Thanks, Againsthegrain. I thought it was pretty safe using PayPal however can see from your post that things could go badly wrong as a seller of a valuable item.

For a while I was getting emails from "PayPal Payement On Ligne <service@paypal.fr>" to say "Accessing your account is restricted. unauthorized transaction". When clicking on properties, the return path was "anonymous@srv.peopleware.pt" which was quite different to the "service@paypal.fr".

It was sent to an email address that has never been used with PayPal, so I suspected foul play with the spelling errors and the return path being unknown to me. They were quickly marked as junk mail and dealt with accordingly!

On one of the emails showed up as a PayPal look alike statement with a large button at the bottom labelled "Recouvery access to your account". How easy that would be for an unsuspecting person to click on that button.

Have posted this in case it should alert someone to this deceit and maybe prevent a disaster...
 
I received text messages for our car that we are selling, basically saying if the car is still for sale contact them by email. After selling many cars over the years I didnt think anything different so sent of a couple emails to the different enquiries only to get similar response as posted above re buyer is overseas blah blah. Of course straight away I knew these were scam emails and I contacted the trading post about it and seems like a big thing at the moment.
Luckily I have a pre paid phone I only use for advertising things as well as a different email address for same thing.

From what I have learned how the scams work is that they say that they have wired you more money then you need to do the sale and they ask you to wire back the difference. Obviously no money was sent in the first place and you have just paid somebody a few thousand for nothing.
 
Thanks againsthegrain and stevenc - great explainations !

I knew it was a scam thats why i posted on here so everyone knows about it. they piss me off so badly. I hope others can also learn from this.

Stevenc - thats a good idea to use a pre paid mobile when you sell things and another separate email... just to be safe that theres no harrassments... Do you have another house for pickups too ? lol

these scammers are all over the internet, and they are thinking of new ways to scam every time. but its too obvious, anything too good to be true, is already suspicious.

p.s - imagine he sent me too much fake money, and wants me to return back some, and i return too much fake money, then he has to pay me back - scamed a scam, I like to see that !!!
 
This is a copy/paste from a regular seller in adelaide on EBAY regarding his thoughts about paypal and how it effects the seller

" Pay Pal is not preferred for Australian Buyers / Bank Deposit is Commonwealth

please remember all items are registered post @ $3.00 extra cost to you ( already included in the postage quote ) the buyer as there are alot of dishonest people out there who play up on the B*$l/S*^^t loophole refund policy that P/P offer to the buyers, this is when you have recived payment for something that you have sold on Ebay & the buyer has recived the item & they say they havnt & claim a refund,So P/P take YOUR money out of YOUR account so you the seller are left with no goods & you are out of pocket,must be a law against it out there somewhere,P/P you are a disgrace & so are those people,so it must be registered that is the only way a seller is covered"
 
I have had very bad experinces with paypal and will never use it again. I sold a mobile phone, the buyer simply claimed it never arrived, paypal took the money back from my BANK accont.

They say they they will never withdraw money from your account without your permission. They stick to their word and wait till the monthly transaction to transfer paypal fees and PIGGYBACK a huge lump sum with it to refund the buyer.
Even though i had a regestered post consignment number.

I'm left out of pocket, with no goods or money.

It gets worse. I launched an investigation through paypal hopeing to get my money back. After 3 months the investigation notes simply said "buyer provided sufficient evidence that the product was not as described"

So now its gone from never arrived to not as described.?

Further, you cannot contact anyone at paypal by phone or email, they simply do not respond.
I warn everyone steer clear.
 

Once he has your paypal details he'll probably go on a spending spree and you won't know about it until you receive your credit card bill. Then see how helpful paypal is in reversing the debits.
 
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