Another typical 'It's too good to be true story ' I'm afraid. It all began when he started looking for a Yamah R1, tried all the usual places like Autotrader/ Gumtree/ Pistonheads and so on........ until he glanced upon a fantastic deal on fleebay. A big bang R1 on a 2012 for £5K, one owner low milage and so on. The site was a motor trader who had more than one bike for sale and had been in business for over 30 years. Great and it was the bike he wanted, so fired of a couple of questions to the vendor and everything seemed perfect, well it would have been if he had actually viewed the bike but it was a long way away from him and the pictures did the bike justice with a guarantee of 14 days if he is not happy. Delivery is scheduled on a week day so he duly pays the dealer into a bank account and waits........ 2 pm was delivery time and it goes by, so he call the dealer and he says that he should be with him within the hour as he has dropped of another bike some 10 miles away. 2 hours pass and nothing so he gets a little worried, and tries to make a call to the phone number, dead, tries again and dead. Thinks nothing of of it and gets another number from directory enquiries. Hello I am trying to speak with>>> about my bike being delivered? What bike is that Sir? The R1? No it's still for sale? No I have bought it? No sir you have not? Anyway the penny drops soon afterwards and he is not the only duped customer. Seems they cloned the site details and set up a bogus company. Police were informed but reckon they have no chance of finding the culprits so beware. He is out of pocket by £5K
Shit - I am wondering about buying a cheapo bike on Ebay that I can't view and would need delivering - already told the buyer I would pay via PayPal if I win the auction and would cover the fees. I could always drive with the trailer and pay cash, but it's near Southampton and I'm in York. Some low life twats out there, but if paid to a bank account how do they get away with hiding their identity in these days of money laundering laws etc?
Ah, hang on a minute, I'll just go and read that bit...................................................Oh right, he bank transferred it, Bugger.
These scumbag scammers are out there and will continue to ply their trade while people send vast amounts of money to Unknown sellers of unseen goods.If you have money to burn then crack on and do it - you might blag a genuine bargain? Probably about 2% of the time? I can't believe in this day and age of internet fraud and scams that people still walk blindly into "too good to be true" deals? Sorry but it was a lesson - not a cheap one but not a life changer
. £5500/6000 will get your arse onto a 2009 Big Bang - he was getting a 2012 for £5000.Its very quick and easy nowadays to do a price comparison on google or any search engine to see if you are paying too much or too little.Get him posted up on Scamalert - the government anti scam website - they track n trace similar scams to try and ascertain if it's the same outfit.The new kids on the block who are doing advert cloning are Eastern Europeans mainly operating from Holland and Belgium
If anyone's interested in knowing how the scam works and pans out I will explain it? I was on the receiving end of one about 9 months ago when I was selling my nutter 600 bhp RS6!
Not as bad as this but I got stung buying an iphone from someone on ebay. Turned out the seller had cloned someone elses account (hard to spot when it all looks genuine). I ended up writing to the CEO of ebay to complain as ebay were not very helpful in getting me my money back. I got a message the next day from the CEO (probably his PA!) and my money was returned. Its a tough one though and many of us have been caught out trying to bag that bargain. Whilst price comparisons and general knowledge go a long way, there are sometimes cheaper than normal bikes out there so I can understand how you would have got carried away trying to bag the R1. I bought my first bike as a distance buy and delivery and it blew up a few weeks later! I learnt my lesson and since then even if I commit to buy online, I wont hand any money over until i've physically seen and tested the bike and met the seller. Ebay have a role to play in this aswell though and they are not doing enough to stop accounts being cloned, in my opinion.
Years ago, I got a message on ebay about a caravan I was selling, I wasn't selling a caravan as I've never bern a Pikey or old and smelling of wee. Checking my account there was indeed a caravan on my page, I tried to delete it but couldn't do anything, told ebay who as above were useless and did nothing. My only option was to answer any questions that for some reason came through to me and tell them it was a scam. This was fine until the scammers managed to stop this as well. Eventually someone paid for it via Weston Union. Ebay were absolutley useless.
The better a bargain looks the more risk that you are going to be ripped off. If the risk is bigger then make sure that you see the bike first. It is all about greed - on both sides. Sorry for your friend, but it would have taken little effort to check out this "too good to be true" bargain.
I brought a guzzi off ebay yesterday from Leeds it sounded too good to be true but just Incase it was true i hit the buy it now, however I looked at the sellers previous and the same bike he had listed a couple of months ago for £3500 more (this was probably the genuine add) anyway i send a couple of emails across yesterday stating i will collect ! But as of yet no reply, there's a tel no on the listing, So i withhold my tel no call and get an international ringing tone and then someone cuts me off.
This is very similar to the 848 Evo that was on sale via eBay by a scammer using a fake account. I engaged him over this knowing he was a scammer. He came up with some fantastic lies and then fell ill and his "wife" took over. A couple of photos of the bike he was selling, it was well below market value. I did cover this in previous postings giving updates as it went along. "Hi and thanks for the email. I am sorry for the late reply. The bike is in very good condition, no problems here, no VAT added, can go straight to riding. I must tell you that it belonged to my grandfather who unfortunately passed away 3 months ago. The price I am looking for is 4,800 pounds (I can also have it delivered within the UK for 120 pounds). Please see the attached pictures. Let me know if you are still interested. It's located in Foveran, near Aberdeen. See below some features on the bike: A pristine bike that has only had one loving owner and only covered 1700 dry miles from new and comes with, colour coded seat cowl, passenger seat and foot pegs (removable), Ducati traction control, Ducati quick shift, larger capacity aluminium fuel tank, 320mm Brembo brakes, Ohlins TTX rear suspension, carbon heel plates, still has factory warranty until 22/5/2015, and full main dealer service history. There are only a handful of these bikes in the UK and are already becoming collectible. Thank you, Anna & James Croft 11 Attachments" This was in fact a real eBay bike and he had cloned the information and the photo's He eventually said he was in a different place in Scotland and the bike started to move around a bit in Scotland as we got into it, but in reality I tracked him down to a property in London. He actually had a job and was running this and other scams from his computer whilst at work!!! his employer knew nothing of this. He is not the first I have encountered either, another was running scams whist owning and running his own import\export business. As always Caveat Emptor and if it sounds to good to be true then it probably is. In the above scenario I asked for all sorts of proof and wound him up a bit until he just dropped me. I knew that would happen, but I think his employer was quite interested in an "anonymous" email he got about his antics showing proof!!!!
I have a car on Gumtree at the moment and the number of attempted scammers is shocking! I hate the c*nts, it's not some corporation or credit card company (not that that's ok) thy're robbing form it's families etc. Burn the bastards alive!
If it sounds too good to be true then it usually is. I have a colleague at work who's always buying "bargains", and then feels whatever he's bought is shit and he's been ripped off. Despite the number of times he's been told this he still continues to look for the holy grail. Sucker!
Had a similar thing happen a few years ago on a CAT C Varadero on ebay. It was obviously a scam but I wanted to wind the guy up so strung him along with all sorts of old tosh. When I got bored I got stuck in to finding the real guy whos identity that the scammer was hiding behind. Found him,(builder in Worcester),called him,he was aghast,he had never owned a bike...ever. Advised him to speak to the old bill etc. A few days later he was kind enough to call me back with an update. He told me that shortly after my call he had been threatened on his doorstep by a guy who had paid for the bike,they went to the police together and it transpired that this scammer was famous in Birmingham area as 11 people had been taken in by him. But he was in Poland so nowt could be done. This is how it worked apparently,(and I don't know if this* can still happen). (1) Scammer opens ebay account by post*,using random details from phone book) (2) Random guy gets letter with ebay logo,ignores it thinking it's a sales thing,but it's actually account confirmation. (3) Scammer uses this to pretend he's genuine ebayer,convinces bidders because it's a genuine UK address etc. The poor guy was devastated on the phone,he was getting phone calls from angry buyers as well,but luckily he could just refer them to the old bill. Bastad for those who paid up though.
