Beware of Scammers when you post WTB

[brybart]

Do not respond to any WTB reply from Thompsongray61 he is a scammer and will rip you off.

[PLP]

There are multiple scammers here...
I had the pleasure to interact with two of them. I reported both... and admin did nothing.

General rule - little or no posts on the account. The age of the account is not necessarily a key, as one account was over 3 months old!!

[JBauer]

Originally Posted by PLP

There are multiple scammers here...
I had the pleasure to interact with two of them. I reported both... and admin did nothing.

General rule - little or no posts on the account. The age of the account is not necessarily a key, as one account was over 3 months old!!

Did you use PayPal? Explain the scam, help others out.

[PLP]

Originally Posted by JBauer

Did you use PayPal? Explain the scam, help others out.

Oh no, we did not get this far.
I could smell it right away. I was looking for a cup tray for 2003, the slim one. They go about 400 new, 200 used.
I got an offer for 100 and asked to send money to some other email, a friends account. All red flags, right?

So yeah, I did - take screen shots of fake PP payment. We played for a while... and he gave up.
I did reverse search of the pictures only to find out they were copies from some Detroit, MI based used parts seller.

No money lost. Just time and 40 emails.
Then another account turned up with offer for another part I was looking for. Similar pattern,

In an essence.
Look at the post count of the person reaching out to you.
If it is just a couple, check them out. See what they said. Many times their messages are lousy - Oh, that's a great idea, or something like that.
If no intro, no pictures of their car, or some other info - do not even bother to share any info.

Never give them your address or email or phone.
That will be for later after validation of their part availability or location.

Also, interesting one - see what time they send messages. If it is say 3 am - c'mon, who in clear mind does that? Anything before 06:00 and after 23:00 is worrying to me. Add maybe 1 or two hours for the different time zone.

Finally - language. I am ESL, so some errors are expected. But... you know.

There could be some typos or so - I do not have my glasses on.
I hope it makes sense.

[brybart]

Yes that's the MO - Paypal friends because it offers no protection. At the very least do not use friends and family on PayPal, pay 1/2 on agreement and 1/2 when you receive the item. Or even push them to go to Ebay post the item with buy it now then transact there. If there is anything fishy they refuse every step of the way.

[CT986S]

An interesting point here, and some non-automotive forums I belong to as well. Things are out of hand, so the recommendation is to not deal with someone with no history. I am about to sell my PSE (not yet removed) but I have little buy/sell history on this site from YEARS ago. How does one acquire the history to be believable? I have no idea. On other sites I only have purchase history, which works I suppose. (Wife: Got a new amp? Are you selling the old one? Me: Uh, no...)

This is mostly rhetorical venting, I don't really think there is a good solution.
Kevin

[Luckyman01]

I do not know if there is a magic amount of posts to be credible. However when I was just recently trying to source a drivers sir cubby lid, I had two different contacts with recent joiners with one post. Both of which wanted me to interact through Gmail. Too shady for me.

Be careful out there.

David