Genuine buyer or scam?

Chino

dieselnutjob wrote: »

So. What are the NORMAL identity theft tricks that people would play with name, address, bank details etc, and, do these tricks apply to Transferwise?

Did you ever consider that your potential buyer might want to assure himself that you are a genuine seller and aren't going to scam him by not supplying the goods after he has transferred the funds to your account?

dieselnutjob wrote: »

I found it a bit strange that his first message to me was in Flemish when the listing was in English and clearly showed that the wheels are in the UK.

Unlike us, he's probably used to people being bi-/tri-lingual.

dieselnutjob

Paypal has a very useful page on courier fraud. From this site and the PayPal one I think that these are the take out points.
Use your own courier and not one that the buyer arranges.
Wait until funds are actually cleared into your account before sending.
Use a courier who doesn't allow redirecting to a different address.

mgdavid

Another way to test if it's a scam of some sort is to offer to meet him somewhere convenient in Europe to do a cash deal. A lot of Brits will be going to Spa for the 6 Hours meeting in 2 weeks' time....

soulsaver

You can still use paypal and avoid a reversal in dispute - he can pay by paypal 'gift'.

It can't be reversed and it cant be disputed...plus you can ask him to pay in sterling and he takes the exchange hit.

qsk

soulsaver wrote: »

You can still use paypal and avoid a reversal in dispute - he can pay by paypal 'gift'.

It can't be reversed and it cant be disputed...plus you can ask him to pay in sterling and he takes the exchange hit.

Where did you read that a F&F payment cannot be reversed? An unauthorised payment reversal does not care what kind of payment it is, to my understanding.

dieselnutjob

qsk wrote: »

Where did you read that a F&F payment cannot be reversed? An unauthorised payment reversal does not care what kind of payment it is, to my understanding.

I found a thread on this site where there were lots of people saying that once money is in your account then it cannot be reversed without your permission. I tried to post a link to it but I don't have enough posts, and now I can't find the link.
The exception seems to be that if someone physically walks into a bank branch and pays a cheque into your account then it can appear to be in the account but actually it hasn't yet cleared.

I also had a long chat with Transferwise today. They told me the following:-
They have no process for "reversals" so it can't be done.
They do not accept cash or cheques into Transferwise accounts.
They don't (yet) support direct debits.

So it would appear that accepting payments through Transferwise is really low risk.

Secondly, they said that if the person paying will open a Transferwise account then the recipient needs to only share one thing with the payee, and that's an email address.

Basically the payee pays transferwise who then send an email to the recipient.

The recipient get a special one time link that enables them to put this their bank details, and they get the money. Their details are not shared with the payee.

As the recipient you just have to make sure that the link really is a genuine Transferwise one (so browser upto date, check the padlock etc).