Beware, scammers everywhere

With all the fees the new sales taxes on used goods sold online the many scammers and the shippers hell bent on smashing your kit. Today I only sell pickup cash in my hand if I know you I may ship. Sure I have to reduce asking prices a bit sure it make take more time. But I get to meet buyer they hear see the gear before purchase no worries about after sale waiting to know if it made it to buyer intact. And I've actually sold other gear to these buyers as they see all my kit. 2 sales one buyer hard to beat that. And I've made a few new friends. Over all for me it's the better way. 

The scam with the movers or buyers associates picking up your product and there drivers giving you a money order or cashiers check for the purchase is a 100 years old, everyone should know about it by now. The buyer comes up with a reason (there are a thousand) why you do not need to ship the unit because he is sending his movers or whatever name they come up with (there are a thousand of names for those people also) and his driver will give you a money order (Postal or whatever you want) or Cashers check (from wherever you want) for the amount that you agreed upon. These money orders and cashers check are professionally counterfeited you can put a real one side by side with the counterfeit ones and you CAN NOT tell the difference unless you are a professional. The paper used in the counterfeit is usually one way to tell it is not real  but the only real way to tell if it is real or not is to call the issuing company and to inquire as to whether the number on the order is real or not.  So the drivers give you the payment you take it to the bank first to make sure it is real, they just look at it and assure you it is real. You deposit the check and life is good, till 10 working days later (usually)when  you are notified that the check was bogus and the funds have removed from your bank account. Your buyer is now a ghost with your equipment and you have no recourse because you wanted to save a few bucks and did not use PayPal. The people who do these kids of scams are professionals every year they get better at what they do, unless you are one of those people you are an amateur and would best be advised to not indulge in any activities with them. Always take precautions.

Another thing I've encountered is that when I've listed an item for sale on Audiogon, the communication begins on the site, but the potential buyer wants to talk and basically transitions the transaction off the site.  One time I spoke with the "buyer" and we came to agreement on the price, but he insisted that I give him my bank account info, so he could transfer the funds without me having to pay the credit card fee..."no thanks".  Another time the "buyer" said that he'd be giving me cash, but when he arrived at my home, insisted on giving me $600 less than we agreed upon when we spoke..."no thanks".

YES I ADMIN A DOZEN fb PAGES AND OUR rules are PayPal for goods and services ONLY ( unless you are picking up parts in person! ) anyone that won’t accept pay pal ? RUN !
i have NO idea how people continue to get cheated ? w/ pay pal G & S you cannot !

There was a seller in an audio forum that had a product that I was very very very much interested in.
He had good feedback from forum members, no negatives.
He would accept only payment by wire transfer…to Turkey,…and he was in the Netherlands.
Allegedly.
I couldn’t do it.

Indeed...A sucker born every minute...Or in the USA 77, 200 million + voting suckers 18 and over in age....

WTF?

I'm the man for that job!

I'm off topic more than I'm on topic.

Isn’t that like 10 times more people than there is on Earth?

Somebody's stuffing that ballot box!

@ chrisosea

"A sucker born every minute...Or in the USA 77, 200 million + voting suckers 18 and over in age.... Indeed...A sucker born every minute...Or in the USA 77, 200 million + voting suckers 18 and over in age"

 She got that many votes. Who knew?

Only way try and sell  Locally...

How’s about this - "no, I don’t see twice the amount on my account. So I am not wiring anything back. You can take it with your bank or sue me. Good luck."

Wire per se is not necessarily a bad thing. You know, businesses do it all the time...

@bilateral so it's cool to have others scammed? Please do tell your side.

@cohicks4  Scammers cannot pull money back from your bank account from a cleared check. A cashiers check is drawn on bank funds as it was purchased by the user. So, you deposit it, it clears, the money is yours. If the check is a fake the bank will spot it as soon as its put into the processing system. If you give up the speakers before the fake is discovered you lost your speakers. 

@jayctoy referring to audioman getting scammed out of 12K.  Decidedly not cool.   

Winerocks what is not cool? Are you joking?

@cohicks4 If you deposit the certified check, how can the scammers pull back the money? And would a cashier’s check make a difference?

Here’s one: I list a higher priced item, someone agrees to buy and then sends me a 2k “deposit” via Zelle which I don’t have. When I respond with No and No, he says ok just send the 2k back to me. 
The scam is you send a payment from a stolen credit card number, wash it through someone’s bank and by the time the CC# shows up on the stolen list you already have your clean funds and are gone. 
Went through this last year and Agon did nothing but insist I refund him immediately. They either are slow to understand scams or just don’t care.

I was on a fake Costco website it looked real but when I went 5o check out something with payment didn't look right, so I canceled.  I always say buyer beware. 

@audioman58 that is not cool.  

When I was a Audio dealer Eve way back in 2000 in the U.K at the time I was getting bogus checks from Africa,

I even got burned for $12k after Barclays Bank said it was good , come to find out 

someone working in NY city  copied a wealthy persons credit card # 

it went to Jacarta Indonesia i tod then to stop shipment and send back 

they had a inside man at the hub there who ignored the stop ,myself and hundreds of other $$ pieces of equipment elsewhere , which would be over $20k today.

If they want to do a wire transfer to your ban that is fine , any checks have to be cleared by your bank and verified before shipping Anything.

I have purchased 3 items at an online audio site and recently made my first sale.  Not having feedback makes one hesitate and it takes time to get established, particularly if one does not buy/sell alot of items.

Next I will be selling my larger integrated and asking over a grand.  It will be relatively low priced compared with others but still its a chunk that could attract scammers, low ballers, etc. 

I sell media on the A/zon platform and usually have had good experiences with an occasional blip: refunds/returns/undeliverables but there have been a few scams.  I learned my lesson and will not ship to certain individuals, just cancel the order.

Hasn't affected my feedback which indicates they intentionally scammed me.  A few times someone returns a different item than the one received, financially it wasn't worth the trouble but I do report them to A.  

The world we live in.

...but. sometimes......*grits gums so hard they squeak*

https://open.spotify.com/track/63WGXIdP0ipN9YHDII7BMU

...added for comic relief....and NO, no specific target... ;)

A dealer in my area makes high end custom tube amps, many employing very valuable vintage parts.  Recently, I saw a listing of Western Electric 171C output transformers, a part he frequently uses, at a very nice price.  The seller claims that he pulled the transformers from Western Electric 124 amps.  When my dealer asked whether he would allow a return if the part turned out not to be genuine, he was told that there was no assurance that the part was genuine (how could it be otherwise if it was pulled from a 124 amp?).  My dealer also asked, and got no response to the question of why would someone pull the transformers to sell them separately from an amp that would sell for ten times the price he was asking for the transformers.  This dealer has nerves of steel when it comes to buying parts.  He recently bought a pair of input transformers for a custom build that cost $10k for the pair; it came from Japan so he felt more confident about it being genuine than a similar pair offered from a Chinese source.

As a seller, he often gets scammed by buyers.  A common scam involves a sale of vintage tubes.  The buyer claims that the tubes that he sent are defective and insists on returning the tubes for a refund.  When the tubes come back, they are not the same tubes that were sent.

@thecarpathian , it was a pair of ARC VTM120s. This was back in the late ’90s when people used to advertise used gear in the classified section in back of Stereophile. The deal went okay, but I guess the potential for fraud exists there as well. I wasn’t the one who was home when the boxes were delivered via usps, so the seller could have easily shipped something besides what I wanted. And thinking about it, seeing as how a money order was used as payment, I wouldn’t have had any recourse at all for a refund, unlike the possibility that exists with a credit card.

@thecarpathian I did to protect other buyers.

Hope you thumped him with some serious negative feedback.

@thecarpathian I did.  Spoke on the phone and he denied all issues.  Did a facetime call to show the problem and he blamed the courier.

I can't see UPS opening up an amp and putting an inline fuse holder to bypass the exterior holder....  That was only on one of them, the other one was stock.

I have had great experiences as a buyer and a seller of audio and car racing related parts and vehicles.

@ervikingo ,

Did you first try to resolve it with the seller? What was the outcome?

I bought some high end amps on another audio forum.  Pics and description were all great.  When they arrived, one was dead.  Seller stated it was working which is strange since it was missing an internal fuse (which when replaced would blow right away).

Sent to OEM for repair and diagnostics (at my cost).  I was not happy.

@immatthewj ,

"I have only bought one second hand piece of gear from a private seller in my life, and for that we went COD. Is COD still a viable option?"

C.O.D?! Didn’t that predate electricity? What did you buy, a new harness for your oxen?

Follow up question; What were your thoughts on the Pony Express?😀

@winerocks ,

I'm sure it hurt more to disappoint them than to lose the money.

That just sucks all around. Karma will get’em! It may take a while, but the bill always comes due.

the amazing part is how easy it to charge you once you give a vendor your credit card. As if you gave them access to your house hold budget, your hard earned money.

• UPS regularly charges after I pay for the shipment  - extra fees with various excuses - e.g. shipment required special handling (a smal 10lbs simple box?)
• pest control  company - comes out unscheduled when nobody is home and posts charges
• cable/internet company - extra charges specifically not discussed.
• Netflix - login from who knows where, when
• ...

 pay attention, it's almost a part time jobs these days....

Some great tips here!  I grew up in a time where thieves broke into houses, cars, and businesses.  I struggle with all the current modes of thievery and deceit, and struggle even more with the seemingly endless quantity of such people.  I have been taken a couple of times, most recently someone managed to wiggle into a private Band group (app) for my kids' swim team parents.  Someone posed as a parent with two Taylor Swift tickets...and I bit.  There were a couple of signs, some of which are mentioned above, but I figured it was a private group of honest-ish people...I serve on the Board of Directors for the team, and know most of the parents.  I lost some money, learned a lesson, and had to let my wife, daughter and her best friend know that it was all a scam, and they would not be able to see Tay-Tay.    

@carlsbad2 aging eyes, small screens and large fingers on the part of the buyer.  

I agree, you can never be too careful.

To bad you can’t give a phone number here to try protect yourself with a phone call.

I tried to sell a lof of things on facebook market. Every scammer had one thing in common, they repeated the same "you can trust me", "you should believe me", "I am out of town but" lines. I would always ask: has it ever worked?

And then I tried to buy a used washing machine on craigslist and the seller called me a fraud when I asked if I can pay with venmo or zelle or she’d prefer cash.

I don’t know if this is how evolution had intended to work or it’s taking a pass on humanity?

If someone sends you money VIA EFT, Wire etc.  You need to wait 48+ hours after the money hits your bank so they cannot call it back.  I had an aerospace company and a customer once sent us $32k VIA EFT in error.  We actually caught it on our end.  Never send the money back!  Wait for it to completely close then send them the money.  Ask your bank. The girl in the customers acct dept was livid!  Tough luck lady, it was your error.  Send them the money and they recall the funds and then WE would have been out the $32k.  -John

I have only bought one second hand piece of gear from a private seller in my life, and for that we went COD.  Is COD still a viable option?

Buyers should only purchase when they have some type of financial protection. Trusting an unknown person does not elevate your human status. FWIW used audio gear is a dime a dozen that's why it sells for 1/3 retail.

Another TIP...

When considering a private-party purchase, I ask the seller to provide the items SERIAL NUMBER, when applicable.  

Scammers hate this question because it allows potential buyers to verify the item is REAL, and usually, what retailer the item was originally shipped to for sale.

I always call the manufacturer and/or the retailer to confirm the item's identity.  As a bonus, the manufacturer usually tells me which, if any, upgrades are appropriate.

Just this week, a I was looking at a potential upgrade.  The seller refused to forward the preamp's serial number.  He also insisted that payment be via direct deposit.  Bothe are Red Flags for me...

I hope this this is useful...

Funny in this thread:  sellers will take nothing but zelle,  pp friends and family, cash and buyers say they will never pay with zelle, pp friends and family, cash....both think they are right.

My take:  as both a buyer and a seller,  I have never made a significant audio sale or purhase that wasn't done with a cash equivalent.  No fees.  I sent over $10K cash equivalent for a DAC once to a guy I met on ebay.  this was after we did a lot of interacting and I was sure he was legit.

Jerry

@cohicks4

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

Interesting, I'm curious how the buyer can gain access and retract money from your account?