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Caution with the ads !!

Just as a general caution, I no longer do any business outside of the US and Canada. It's really difficult to investigate any problems and oftentoo much time can pass between emails when securing a deal.

Also, if you are going to take a personal check you can do a couple of things to protect yourself.

1) Call the bank that issues the check and verify funds are available before depositing. This is legal and your is right to do.

2) After depositing a personal check, wait 10 business days before shipping anything. Just make sure this is clear with the buyer. like " sure, I'll take a personal check, but your shipping will be delayed by 14 days untill the check clears" if it's a big enough deal to the buyer, they will go to the bank or post office and get a cashiers check.

geting ripped off sucks.

Bob.

The only time I've been ripped off, it was in my own country (a small amount anyway, i'm very cautious on large ones). I've bought/sell in France, Belgium, UK, Germany, Austria, Australia and the USA, everything went smoothly save in my own country, once.

bobdemaa, I may add :

- wait till the check is credited AND your bank has made sure the money is really there (it's not the time the account is credited, it's the say 3 weeks the nigerian check you pay to cash in is declare as naught); it may be the clearing, but it's not the way it's handled here. Ask to your bank the time it take, and don't ship till it's cleared. If the buyer is serious, he'll understand.

- Never use money transfert, paypal, Western Union on large amounts. I've used extensively paypal but I was sure of the buyer/seller. Use money escrow services! Use them! Really!

- if you pay, impose any means to secure the selling, that is, the money escrow service. if the other party refuses, drop it.

- if you have a doubt, abstain!

And i've posted already some basic rules… somewhere…

Note: one of our members has a €23000 check on his account now which is certainly bogus, so play safe. it just drive us mad to see our members get scammed.

well

i actualy got emails in the past from some strange people who wanted to buy something from me,

then went through this long story that they had a check for thousands of euros and trusted that i would accept it, cash it and mail the balance back..

i refused ofcourse!

I thought that the way it works is that they see if there victem would fall for it by :
a) becuase they might be desperate to sell there merchindise or
b) tempted to keep the rest of the balance breaking there word.

Once the victem is enchanted, he/she accepts the check handing over the mechindise to USP etc.,
then the check would be bad and the merchidise is delivered to the crooks place, in the end nothing could be done about it.

this is what i though it was.

look out

This post has been edited by Jibril: Wed 16 Feb 2005, 11:41

This is it, exactly!

A little update, I still regularly ban the offenders (we find you anyway you %$*&#@) still. Now for the members here in the USA, there a new service to help you out of scams in case you've been wronged:

IFCC webpage

Make good use of it