Words of warning for second-hand sellers
QWE bought a mattress for £250 which turned out to be too big. Our fault.
We put it up for sale on Gumtree for £125 specifying you would need a large car or a van to collect. Two people showed interest. They asked us the usual questions about condition (unused!), when they could come and look at it, and, as we expected, tried to bargain us down.
But a third person emailed to say she would buy it for £125 without seeing it – only because of illness, she would send a courier to collect and send the money by PayPal.
This was quite a different approach – and one that we had not seen before – we have sold quite a few low priced items on Gumtree and potential buyers have always wanted to look and then paid in cash.
Should I ignore this despite the full price offer? Christine L
AWHICH? says: Huge numbers of emails like the one you received are sent to sellers on Gumtree and similar sites. They are scams – yours does not even specify a mattress but has vague wording (the spelling and grammar are also bad) and an excuse for not coming to your door.
The sender writes: “Great! please consider all sold kindly remove the ad 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, sadly 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 homebound.”
But no one buys a second hand mattress sight unseen.
The email address, now disabled, seems to come from a Kelly Booksy. She does not exist. She promises money via PayPal and collecting via a “courier.”
If you were selling a small high-value item – phone or camera – the “courier” would collect it, and you would either find the PayPal transaction reversed or it was from a hacked account and the real owner had been reimbursed. So you lose your goods and money.
There are warnings about this and similar rackets from Gumtree and from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau.
Always insist on cash for lower value items. For higher value goods such as cars, always wait until cheques clear before handing the item over.