Car Scams

[Pelly Greeny]

There's been a load of them on eBay, gumtree etc recently.

Listings showing nice cars/bikes/campers etc and at a good price. The scammers have learned that too good to be true offers are now recognised as scams straight away. These are now vehicles at a very good price- something you'd expect to pay £10k up for £8.5k - whereas they used to be on at £4k. That thought of missing out on a bargain makes people rush into things they ordinarily may not be so keen to do.

Seller usually asks for contact via email outside of eBay.

Often the vehicle is stored at a different address than the advert suggests. Sometimes it is claimed it is a relatives car or part of an deceased/ill relatives estate. Quite often it is a new account with no feedback. There may well be a few other vehicles up for sale from the same 'seller' too.

Then the story is usually pretty similar no matter what the vehicle - seller is not in the UK as they are on holiday, working or visiting relatives.
They ask for bank transfer or Paypal and say that the buyer is protected against fraud etc. Paypal protection does not cover motorised vehicles or direct payments to people.

There are plenty of forums offering advice and tips on buying cars - if you're not sure go check that what you are doing is safe. These criminals aren't stupid and make everything seem legit to anyone who's not aware of these scams.

One old guy spent £28k on a dream camper that didn't exist. Was told the sellers were in Dublin looking after an ill relative and that the camper would be delivered from Scotland to him via transporter. Paypal not interested as it was a motor vehicle, the account the guy paid was not verified and it was a personal transfer. Police looked into it but the money is soon transferred all over the place and is hard to follow.

They're not all £28k either - can be a couple of thousand too. After all I think you'd be quite happy doing two £2k scams a week wouldn't you - four grand tax free for a few hours work?

 

[jacko74]

I've seen a few of these ads and they do look very plausible, apart from the too good to be true prices.

You'd have to be pretty stupid to hand any money over by whatever means, to buy a car you've not even seen on the say so that the seller will arrange for it to be delivered to you.

 

[blueinsa]

Recently got a new motor from a main dealership but just before that, our budget was looking less than we eventually went for so was looking online at the ads. Rang one guy and like the OP he didn't answer so i left a message with my number. i then got a txt asking for my email as he couldn't phone due to work but could email. I set up a new email i would never use again as i thought here we go and yup, he was selling the car for a mate, it wasn't parked at his address but some other place etc etc etc.

be careful folks and if in any doubt just walk away.

 

[Citizen of Legoland]

No such thing as a scam ... there's only stupid (or greedy) punters.

I'll write a book about it when I get my money from Nigeria.

 

[Anonymous]

Don't buy outside of eBay ever. Treat any excuse to do so as a warning to walk away. Treat any exchange like a drug deal and take along a few heavies, my older brother usually provides the muscle for me. He's like a male Gorgon, people don't even like looking at him so very little chance of anybody trying to attempt to rip him off.

 

[Pelly Greeny]

Don't buy outside of eBay ever. Treat any excuse to do so as a warning to walk away. Treat any exchange like a drug deal and take along a few heavies, my older brother usually provides the muscle for me. He's like a male Gorgon, people don't even like looking at him so very little chance of anybody trying to attempt to rip him off.

These are classified adverts on eBay so all eBay do is host the advert.

They take no responsibility for anything other than putting the advert up as you have asked them to. Buying a car from a classified is always outside eBay so not much you can do really - just be careful and ask around for advice.

Even if you pay by Paypal you have no comeback as they exclude vehicles and personal payments from the protection scheme.

No need to have a chaperone for these as you'd never get to see the car or the seller - the 'seller' has lifted the pics and description from elsewhere.

There's a guy on Facebook, Jack Buster, that spends all day reporting these things!!

 

[Anonymous]

Don't buy outside of eBay ever. Treat any excuse to do so as a warning to walk away. Treat any exchange like a drug deal and take along a few heavies, my older brother usually provides the muscle for me. He's like a male Gorgon, people don't even like looking at him so very little chance of anybody trying to attempt to rip him off.

These are classified adverts on eBay so all eBay do is host the advert.

They take no responsibility for anything other than putting the advert up as you have asked them to. Buying a car from a classified is always outside eBay so not much you can do really - just be careful and ask around for advice.

Even if you pay by Paypal you have no comeback as they exclude vehicles and personal payments from the protection scheme.

No need to have a chaperone for these as you'd never get to see the car or the seller - the 'seller' has lifted the pics and description from elsewhere.

There's a guy on Facebook, Jack Buster, that spends all day reporting these things!!

I haven't bought secondhand cars for over 10+ years but even if I did I wouldn't buy one from eBay or Gumtree.

 

[Anonymous]

Don't buy outside of eBay ever. Treat any excuse to do so as a warning to walk away. Treat any exchange like a drug deal and take along a few heavies, my older brother usually provides the muscle for me. He's like a male Gorgon, people don't even like looking at him so very little chance of anybody trying to attempt to rip him off.

These are classified adverts on eBay so all eBay do is host the advert.

They take no responsibility for anything other than putting the advert up as you have asked them to. Buying a car from a classified is always outside eBay so not much you can do really - just be careful and ask around for advice.

Even if you pay by Paypal you have no comeback as they exclude vehicles and personal payments from the protection scheme.

No need to have a chaperone for these as you'd never get to see the car or the seller - the 'seller' has lifted the pics and description from elsewhere.

There's a guy on Facebook, Jack Buster, that spends all day reporting these things!!

You said sellers were contacting people outside of eBay in your OP so I was responding to buying 'outside of eBay', also if people are paying via PayPal with no guarantees from eBay, again with no guarantees then the gullible fuckers deserve all they get IMHO.

 

[Pelly Greeny]

Don't buy outside of eBay ever. Treat any excuse to do so as a warning to walk away. Treat any exchange like a drug deal and take along a few heavies, my older brother usually provides the muscle for me. He's like a male Gorgon, people don't even like looking at him so very little chance of anybody trying to attempt to rip him off.

These are classified adverts on eBay so all eBay do is host the advert.

They take no responsibility for anything other than putting the advert up as you have asked them to. Buying a car from a classified is always outside eBay so not much you can do really - just be careful and ask around for advice.

Even if you pay by Paypal you have no comeback as they exclude vehicles and personal payments from the protection scheme.

No need to have a chaperone for these as you'd never get to see the car or the seller - the 'seller' has lifted the pics and description from elsewhere.

There's a guy on Facebook, Jack Buster, that spends all day reporting these things!!

I haven't bought secondhand cars for over 10+ years but even if I did I wouldn't buy one from eBay or Gumtree.

Things have changed a lot recently ;-)

Ebay probably has the biggest choice of vehicles nowadays. Saying you wouldn't buy one off there would massively reduce what you could choose from. Not sure about Gumtree as the stuff I've been buying - old VWs - isn't on there in any great quantity.

Many of the adverts on the VW sites I'm on are on eBay too. Pistonheads and Autotrader ads are also often on it as well.

The biggest VW site is a pain to trawl through for vehicles as they're not listed by type, price, location and ads often aren't updated when the vehicle is sold so you end up messaging someone and waiting a couple of days for a reply. Only when you haven't got one do you realise it isn't just that the seller hasn't checked his emails. No doubt the other car forums are the same.

On eBay you can easily search for make, model, price and location - saves a lot of time if you're just starting to look.


So there's not really much choice if you avoid eBay - the days of thumbing through Autotrader on a Thursday morning are long gone ;-)

Back then it was clocked vehicles and two different cars welded together you had to look out for.