ebay motorhome scam in news (bank transfer)

soolin

https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/11685839/nhs-workers-drive-2-hours-to-pick-up-dream-motorhome-but-it-was-a-14000-ebay-scam/

The scam worked (and yes I suspect regulars know what is coming)......

'As Paul paid the seller by bank transfer rather than via PayPal his payment wasn't protected by eBay's buyers guarantee.'

This highlights the fact that despite warnings just about everywhere - people still trust bank transfers - and I have no idea why. Just look at the vent and  warning board here on MSE in the first couple of pages there are reports of bank transfer scams, we get them on this sub board, they even get mentioned on the banking sub board. I do feel sorry for people who get blinded by the idea of a bargain and I truly wish there was some way of getting people to listen to the warnings. If people were were aware then these awful scumbag scammers would have to give up as no one would be paying them, and the idea of all these scammers having to get real jobs is very appealing. 

custardy

I read that the other day.
Sending £14K to a complete stranger without even seeing the vehicle?

soolin

custardy said:

I read that the other day.
Sending £14K to a complete stranger without even seeing the vehicle?

Yep, the coverage warning about bank transfers is huge yet if I go onto my local facebook selling groups I could probably find 3 or 4 threads just from today asking what to do as they sent a bank transfer and seller has disappeared. Most of the local selling groups have been warnings about not using bank transfers - even asking people to confirm they have read the various warnings posted before allowing them to join the selling groups- and yet they still pay.

This could be a really easy scam to stamp out yet it seems is getting more and more common despite warnings everywhere. 

I don't know how we can protect people from it.

jonesMUFCforever

I know of somebody who was going to fall for the same scam (not quite that amount though) the bank refused to make the transfer as they thought it dodgy. So the bank saved them but his wife gave him hell for being so stupid in the first place.

soolin

jonesMUFCforever said:

I know of somebody who was going to fall for the same scam (not quite that amount though) the bank refused to make the transfer as they thought it dodgy. So the bank saved them but his wife gave him hell for being so stupid in the first place.

My OH had the same. We have had building work done and we had to pay the scaffolding and material money and OH was happy to do it by BT . He sent £1 to check the account was correct then tried to send £1200 and was stopped by the bank with online warnings about potential scam and asking for confirmation that he knew the person he was transferring to (which he does), transfer was refused. OH phoned the bank and was basically lectured about the dangers of BT but they finally allowed him to make the transfer. 

Second instalment also was blocked and again OH had to convince bank it was legit and they said the final payment wouldn’t be a problem. However tried to make the final payment once we had inspected the work and it failed again....I was happy with the bank checking but OH was getting rather frustrated. 

Sasahara

It's very sad, but you do have to wonder "I’ve now got to work until I’m 73 to pay off the mortgage" then why are you spending 14k on a motorhome!  Unless they were planning on selling the house and living in the motorhome.

Brywalker

Sasahara said:

It's very sad, but you do have to wonder "I’ve now got to work until I’m 73 to pay off the mortgage" then why are you spending 14k on a motorhome!  Unless they were planning on selling the house and living in the motorhome.

Yes, that puzzled me too.  Having to work till his 70s is not a consequence of being scammed. He had already taken the decision to work till he was 73 whether the sale had gone through or not!

GabbaGabbaHey

The motorhome scam was mention on Tonight on ITV this evening. It obviously works often enough that the scammers will keep trying it :-(

custardy

GabbaGabbaHey said:

The motorhome scam was mention on Tonight on ITV this evening. It obviously works often enough that the scammers will keep trying it :-(

Pop on Gumtree and you will regularly see vehicles that are simply too cheap/good to be true.

forgotmyname

Autotrader used to have waves of them, adverts appeared as soon as their office closed for the weekend.

I had several browser links stored that found most of them very quickly but they changed the site search
and it blocked my methods.

Tallaght

Do a google image reverse search and it will show if ad pics originate elsewhere.