SELLING SCAMS: Couriers & fees

We recently advertised a set of wheels for sale on Gumtree and quickly received an email from someone called Jodell Jenny, asking if the wheels were still for sale. We replied to say they were and received this email: “Great! please consider it sold and i want you to remove the advert as i am willing to pay your full asking price because i need to buy it for my cousin asap, i have read through the advert and i’m totally satisfied with it. Unfortunately i would not be able to come personally to collect due to my hearing loss and I’m just recovering from heart surgery so I’m house-bound, I have a courier agent that would help me to pick it up at your preferred location after you have received your money and i’ll pay you via Paypal once you are ready.”

Aside from the poor grammar, this all sounds fine, albeit somewhat hard to believe (hearing loss and heart trouble?). However, Vik Barodia, Head of Motors at Gumtree, explained that this is a typical example of a scam commonly seen in the motoring industry. Gumtree has a whole team of people dedicated to identifying scams and establishing methods of eradicating fraudsters.

Mr Barodia explained that, in our case, had we proceeded with the sale, the so-called buyer would have sent us a part-payment for the wheels. They would then arrange for an unofficial courier to collect the wheels, whereby we would have to make a payment to them for the collection, which would be more than the deposit we had received. The buyer would promise to pay us the courier’s fees, the outstanding balance for buying the wheels and a little extra once the wheels had been delivered. The wheels would be collected, we would hand over money to the courier and that would be the last we would see of our wheels, our money and any communication from the buyer.