Audiogon Question

I'm selling a pair of Magnepans on Audiogon and as usual, have had no response. Yesterday, a guy from Argentina (allegedly) contacts me and says he'd like the speakers and gave me an address and phone number of a guy in Miami to ship them to and he'll forward them on to the end buyer https://speedtest.vet/.

At first glance, this doesn't pass the smell test. However, he did give me a phone number, which I may call later today https://showbox.tools/. The other issue I have is that I have little to no experience with PayPal. How hard is it to defraud PayPal and leave me without my money and the loss of my speakers?

I got this,.

It’s easy to defraud PayPal as a buyer and PayPal almost always sides with the buyer. When I ship international I always have the buyer use PayPal friends and family so there is no recourse. Once you ship anything overseas/international, their is no tracking after customs gets involved so the buyer can actually state he never received the product when he actually did.

Also for jasonbourne52 - you are misguided if you think it’s foolproof. You better know how to deal with buyers and PayPal. For example, how many times have you heard of the buyer accepting your items and then complaining to PayPal that what you shipped them is faulty where in reality, they are sending you their not working pieces and if you don’t write down the serial #’s or mark the product a certain way, then you the seller are out of luck. 
also, I have had multiple people wanting their money back because they didn’t receive the item where I have a digital receipt of their signature on arrival. The list goes on. With expensive equipment, I force the buyer to drive here and pay me, I have had multiple people drive over 1000 miles to deal in person in cash.

I had an eBay customer in Australia. He had his USA purchased stuff sent to a consolidator in Long Beach. When enough stuff collects he has it shipped.

I have had good luck on this site for a long time by trusting my gut wrt dealing with people.  The deal proposed by your buyer(s) is a known scam as pointed out by several here.  The gold standard would be a local cash sale with local pick-up by the buyer.  Anything less increases your risk and requires you to decide on the level of risk you are comfortable with in order to sell the speakers.  Other options are to be patient and wait for a better buyer and/or to lower your price if you want to speed things up.

I agree with the suggestion to use PayPal and only ship to a verified address as recommended by @jasonbourne52 - but even with that option there are still risks that the buyer may claim shipping damage and lock up your account.  Risks of real or imagined shipping damage claims increase when shipping large, expensive items such as speakers. 

Unfortunately, bad actors act badly.  This is a reason you sometimes see sellers require "a history of positive feedback" - a due diligence step that can reduce risks and protect a seller from one-time bad actors.  Things you can do include requiring your buyer have prior positive feedback, requiring payment by PayPal (or that other payment methods clear prior to shipping), and only shipping to a verified PayPal address.  Also, pack the speakers better than they were packed by the original manufacturer, and photo-document each step.  Good luck.

The common scam associated with this is they will ask you to use an escrow account that turns out to be fake.

There are real legitimate forwarding services out there.

The key is payment.  If he gives you real money with no strings attached, for example venmo or paypal gift, you have no risk.

If he pays with a reversible form of payment, I'd likely pass.

Jerry

@jason

I could screw that up ...

That is a known scam scenario.

Get the person in Miami to contact you and pay for the speakers. Then send them to the address on his PayPal account. Foolproof!

TON’s of previous feedback or no go. Third party deals are ALWAYS suspect. If you were selling something easy to ship and cheap, might be ok. But speakers? Nope, nada.

Don't even think about it. Pass.

Don't do it. If it feels iffy, then it is. This has scam written all over it.

Agree, let the feedback be your guide. But it seems like a risk.

A potential buyer contacted me and said to ship the item to CA and his friend would deliver it to him in Hong Kong. He had no Audiogon feedback and I didn't like the terms of this sale, so I declined.

Is the guy who contacted you a member here with an extensive record of great feedback? If the answer to that is no, I'd pass for sure on this offer. If it is yes, a phone call is the next logical step, but I don't like the sound of this.