Beware, scammers everywhere

Dayglow, this is with out of country buyers. I also pay through Zelle and pp friends and family with sellers that have great feedback. Never been scammed. They’ve all been complete gentleman. I’ve done at least 20k this way. Buyers only hold the ace card if you’re desperate to sell which I never am. 

@mickeyb     -1  Never purchase from Paypal Family/Friends only!!! Realize you have the junk gear desperately trying to dump. Will only deal with Brick/Mortar dealears when this type of attitude exists. Buyers hold the Ace card!!!

@cohicks4  good catch, and good thing you caught it before you lost any money or equipment.  
 

If I feel someone is sketchy, I’ll only take zelle or pp friends and family. Take it or leave it. If they look at my feedback, I’m completely trustworthy. They, on the other hand, have to prove they’re honest. I get lots of offers overseas and this is the only way I’ll sell to them. I’m completely covered. They usually don’t respond after I lay down my guidelines and I could care less. Stuff sells, it just takes patience and good negotiations with honest people. 

Had this happen to me the next day after listing some speakers on here. Someone reached out to me and asked me to text or call them to discuss. I have paid upfront for the add so no loss of commission for either party. The person and I discussed a lower price. They would send me a certified check and I said I would arrange for shipping and palletize them, based on their area code. Going back and forth with UPS to establish a price and came close, letting the buyer know that it was slightly above my listed cost based on research but would be willing to eat the difference of about $60.00. So I asked for their zip and they would NOT give me anything...name, address, nothing. Of course they had my phone number and address now. And said I didn't need their address since they were sending a driver with their company to pick the pallet up🤔. Wow, this must be a company or something. Turns out AGON and I had a discussion about it and this is a known scam. Once you get the money in your bank and the item is picked up by their service it's retracted from your account...and it's now a theft scam, and your item is gone. So, I cancelled the deal, blocked them and done😩.

Thanks for having my back AGON!

Had this happen to me the next day after listing some speakers on here. Someone reached out to me and asked me to text or call them to discuss. I have paid upfront for the add so no loss of commission for either party. The person and I discussed a lower price. They would send me a certified check and I said I would arrange for shipping and palletize them, based on their area code. Going back and forth with UPS to establish a price and came close, letting the buyer know that it was slightly above my listed cost based on research but would be willing to eat the difference of about $60.00. So I asked for their zip and they would NOT give me anything...name, address, nothing. Of course they had my phone number and address now. And said I didn't need their address since they were sending a driver with their company to pick the pallet up🤔. Wow, this must be a company or something. Turns out AGON and I had a discussion about it and this is a known scam. Once you get the money in your bank and the item is picked up by their service it's retracted from your account...and it's now a theft scam, and your item is gone. So, I cancelled the deal, blocked them and done😩.

Thanks for having my back AGON!

@akg_ca I agree that these low lifes do walk among us and never is it ever more prevalent than in social media dating websites. I have had good luck with a variety of transactions thru paypal and fleabay, though I havent bought anything thru ebay in a long time. I have found that most things available on ebay can be bought elsewhere less expensively. How to ensure your transaction is truly secure is nearly impossible. I try to stick to known businesses with a long track record of safe transactions. THough changes to the way outfits like Amazon associate with their suppliers is beginning to impact my level of trust in even these established businesses. It is a scary thing... bricks and mortar places are disappearing and online outlets are becoming less reliable, so what is left is fleamarkets I guess and totally cash transactions. Or at least that is the trend...

Yep ….. . they DO walk among us,

I use CAM and USAM with good results, but the low-lifes need to be excised there too.., All the major audio forums have their incidences.

It’s a common sense thing to hedge against the nuisance bottom-feeders.

(1) In God we trust….. everybody else pays cash.
Up here in Canada, we have our nation-wide major banks in a linked robust and secure banking system that makes EFT cash transfers a fast and ultra-simple bank account-to-bank account point & click instant fundstransfer….EZPZ.

(2) Cross-border / international deals are best served for me using PayPay and absorbing its fees as a relative accepted cost of insurance burden.

(3) If ,,,,absence of forum prior good positive feedback, and absence of priorforum participation postings; or recent new member sign-up profiles is an added harbinger for risk management caution, All responses to my ads on CAM are restricted to card-carrying members only,

(4) Regardless …. If buyers or sellers suddenly introduce kitschy new requests to do the deal ….then it’s a fast sayonara. If they press their BS any further, its a profane slang pejorative derived from Genesis 9:7 and a quick blocking out….full stop.

@jetter  you assumed, but not wanting to make waves, I was purposely vague.

@carlsbad2

My bad, I assumed that you were referring to this forum when you wrote

I recently sold a $3K used streamer to a fellow audiophile. It started out on the forum

Hard RULE #1:  A Phone conversation prior to closing the deal. It's REAL easy to find out if the other party knows and understands the item at issue. 

@jetter my feedback will always be zero. check for the same name elsewhere. You can figure it out pretty easily.

Having perfect feedback is important.  I've said for decades that a man only has one reputation.  It takes years to build it and only one bad deal to tarnish it.  Back when I had an ebay coin business I had perfect feedback over tens of thousands of transactions but had to bend over backwards a few times.

@winerocks , Thanks.

@snapsc , I disagree. Everyone has to start with their first purchase.

No matter what site you are using for buying or selling, unless the other party has at least 3+ transactions...and one of them near the dollar figure you are considering...then DON'T take the chance..and if you do, its on you.

I ended the discussion (it ended itself) by telling him I would only accept payment through a platform that protected me as a seller, and him as a buyer.  No response after that.  A part inside of me wants to believe it was a legitimate intent to purchase.   
 

@carlsbad2 

I recently sold a $3K used streamer to a fellow audiophile. It started out on the forum but then I got an email from him because he was out of the US and couldn’t get the forum to load.

I thought it would be interesting to see your buyer's feedback but your feedback shows no transactions ever.  I guess after the buyer emailed you from your contact info provided by A'gon the remaining transaction was completely off A'gon?

@winerocks ,

How did you respond to them?

You didn’t mention that part.

The scammers are getting more and more sophisticated.  Around here the latest scam is a text that looks like it’s coming from EZ Pass that you have an unpaid toll charge.  You have to look closely that the link isn’t exactly the same as the real vendor.  In addition the cell number it comes from is from outside the US.  Selling and buying online is also getting more involved and requires more scrutiny.  

Indeed skiznfliz, PayPal fees are not cool.  
 

If Paypal’s fees were not so insane, as well as, not to be so quick to dismiss a seller’s defense when disputing a bogus claim from a scammer, maybe they’re wouldn’t be so many issues.     

@oddiofyl -- It stuns and flabbergasts me that in today's "Scamner Society", there are still people who would scan a QR Code from some random letter they received.  Anybody that has elderly parents with smartphones should go through and remove any apps that their parents could mistakenly use causing trouble. 

A phone call goes a long way with me when closing the deal. Not fool proof, but you’ll usually know.

I recently sold a $3K used streamer to a fellow audiophile. It started out on the forum but then I got an email from him because he was out of the US and couldn’t get the forum to load. At first I didn’t realize it was the same guy so I was treating this communication as a possilble scammer.

He made an offer, I countered, he countered, and we settled on a price. His sensitivity to price made me think it was not a scammer. He sent me his shipping info to his work address, in Florida, I asked why he didn’t contact me on the forum and that is when he explained he did and was having trouble outside the country.

Making sense but still not fully making me comfortable. Then he called me and we talked a while about our systems and details about various streamers and I realized he was indeed an audiophile.

Then he tried to send zelle and it didn’t go through. We waited a day. I was wondering if now that he had my confidence, he was going to try to get me to honor some sketchy payment method. Then we had a day of silence as he traveled back to the US.

The next day we started texting. BofA was saying that I needed to enroll my number. I sent him a screenshot of part of my Zelle page showing that my number was indeed enrolled (making sure not to have any confidential info on it) and he immediately realized he had made a typo sending the zelle payment on his phone. He fixed it and I had the payment, in irreversible funds, in minutes.

I tell this story to show some of the perhaps-not-red-but-yellow flags that can pop up, how you need to be aware of them but be aware of things that are inconsistent with a scam as well. In the end, I met a good guy and fellow member of our audiophile group.

Jerry

New scam you need to share with all family members.   A small token gift or envelope arrives.   You open it to see a QR code.    It tells you to scan code.  Upon doing that you just dumped the entire contents of your phone into the scammers computer.