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Random thought.
Have you ever been scammed from an online purchase?
I've purchased hundreds of second hand items online from eBay but can't think of one time I was scammed and 8 out of 10 purchases are usually over $100.
Have You Ever Been Scammed?
LLuckyuser on 03/12/2016 - 12:47
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Bought an iPhone charging cable off a company spruking on oz bargain. Soon as I plugged it in I got the error message. I contacted the guy and he was "no worries, send it back and I'll refund you".
Sadly I did and he never replied to anything again. Got me for the five buck cable and another two dollars to send his dud lead back.so you end up being the scammer by keeping it… disappointing
It's kind of subjective how you should feel about it.
If they suffered losses because of late delivery, then I think it would be fine.
For example, the delivery / courier delivered your transplant heart 5 days late and you subsequently failed to quality for the operation due to complications and died.Or on the other hand, if you wanted the dog harness in time just to show it off to your friends how fancy it is at a get together.
But I agree it's a bit scummy since i can't imagine any sort of massive losses in this scenario.
Eh I had a similar case except my item I got 2nd hand off ebay was counterfeit at about $65 shipped from the US. I proved to PayPal it was fake and they refunded me, and I got to keep it lol. But screw him sending me a fake.
Disappointing, the word I would use to describe:
- Not having a harness to be able to take my dog with us for the weekend because the seller lied on the eBay listing.
- The time wasted emailing the seller because they lied on the eBay listing.
And now I'm supposed to tell them I've received the item, not as described (they lied about the postage method & time taken), and have to spend time opening another ebay dispute to get postage money and spend 30 minutes going to the post office to send it back to them? yeah right..
Yeah so then you just steal it hahaha seems fair man. Just not a fan of your bragging about getting things without paying for them but yeah at the end of the day is your business.
a similar thing happened to me, and like you, i wanted to teach them a lesson. they had listed the item location as australia. i specifically chose "within australia" because i wanted the item by a certain date. low and behold, they sent the item from china and it took about 2-3 weeks to arrive. i left them negative feedback and called it a day.
I find that if you leave negative feedback then about half the time they will offer you a full refund if you amend it.
So you deal with unethical sellers by being
an unethical buyertheft?
10 years ago when I was still in high school - i bought a 42" LCD no brand full HD LCD for a 'bargain' $1200.
Came home and the image crapped out. Told the guy and he said no refunds. Dont know why I still have it in my shed today. Lesson learnt.Seriously? I bought a brand new Sony 32" fhd TV in '08 for $800. It still works as good as new and it's now my pc monitor.
Unlucky mate.
Gumtree. It was the first time I had purchased something online and it was the worst. I needed study materials so I purchased a collection for $300 (I even tried negotiating the price which feels stupid now). He received the money but never sent the items. He stopped replying to my msgs and completely disappeared after pretending to have sent it. I was going through VCE so I didn't report it but I sometimes wish I did. Although I hear it doesn't really do anything even if you do report it. Now I don't buy things unless it has paypal so much easier. Ive had few incidents and Ive always had them help me through it which is awesome
Makes textbook pdf piracy real tempting doesn't it? Trying to be honest and do the right thing but brand new books are prohibitively expensive, so your next affordable option is second hand, but then you get burnt anyway.
Heh, tempting.
Somewhat related: A few years ago my eBay sellers account (thousands of 100% positive feedback) was hacked. It was early morning on Boxing Day and I woke up to found that I've just sold 50+ brand new iPhones for some ridiculous price like $350. As I was sitting there in horror people keep snapping them up.
I ended the listing but the scammer relist it straight away, and they changed my account password so I was locked out. The scammer changed the payment account details and this was pre PayPal days. I called eBay and they eventually sorted out the account issues but 100+ people got scammed. I think eBay did pay them back (eventually after they've done their investigation) but that wouldn't have been a nice thing to deal with over Christmas/New Year…
Moral of the story is, if it's too good to be true, it probably isn't, doesn't matter which seller it's from. I guess these days it's easier to get your money back with PayPal tho.
The scammer changed the payment account details and this was pre PayPal days.
What do you mean by this?
iPhones came out in 2007 and eBay has owned Paypal since 2002.
They changed the direct deposit details to their bank account.
PayPal wasn't compulsory back in the days. Most people were paying via direct deposit.
Ah, fair enough. Thanks for clarifying.
Got scammed by this guy before.
Purchased Ticketek gift vouchers from gumtree. Initially he sold me a $250 gift voucher from memory. I think I paid about $150. I was willing to the risk as he gave me a legitimate reason for selling it that he works in the mines and won them as prizes or something along those lines. It felt legit at the time anyway.
So I went straight to a Ticketek outlet and made the purchase. The transaction went through fine no problems at all. Went to the concert and had a great time.
Then I saw some more vouchers up online. Was the same guy and I felt that he was genuine now so purchased some more. This continued for a while until I went to a venue and my tickets came up as fraudulent.Basically what the guy was doing was buying ticketek gift vouchers with stolen credit cards. The gift vouchers were only flagged when the person realised their credit card number had been stolen. Which sometimes took over a month and hence if I didn't go to the concert straight away by then the tickets were cancelled.
I lost around $500 all up.
There is a lot more to the story but that's the short of it.Reported it to the police and guy just said he purchased gift vouchers from another guy in good faith so he didn't get in a lot of trouble. Guy had a history with criminal activity too and was a drug addict.
I wasn't the only one affected by the same guy as I managed to find at least 2 others.Many mines in Adelaide lol?
No the guy was from Perth which kind of made it seem legit.
Yes! A bunch of gypsy kids asked me to sign a petition to allow disabled access to the National Museum of Art in Barcelona then asked for a 'donation'. I gave them a euro and they tried to steal my wallet and pull whatever they could out of my pockets. Luckily I had a tight grip and got away… damn gypsies. I was very naive back then…
Oh wait. Online scam. Sorry can't think of anything.
Yeah, in Europe, thieves are more skillful XD Tourists and Asians are their main targets.
They are kids so they can steal all day.
Tried to get scammed out of $60 purchasing a GameOfThrones boxset on Gumtree. Over a week had passed since guy said he posted it and I hadnt received it so sent him a message asking for tracking number. He sends me some invalid tracking number at which point I new something was up.
I replied saying the tracking number wasn't correct and a few days passed without reply. So I open a PayPal dispute and lo and behold he replies within an hour asking why I opened a dispute. I tell him this isn't my first tango (even though it was) and I'm the wrong guy to try scam. He replies saying he posted it but he forgot to sign the parcel and would send me another one (LOL!). Anyway opening the PayPal dispute did the trick and 4 days later it arrives. I close the dispute not before giving him some more advice. Glad I didn't have to get a refund as that was a good price for a Blu-ray boxset at the time.
Fell for the classic iPhone scam for $400, back when I was young and naieve.
The seller said they were interstate and would post, so I transferred via bank transfer and never heard from the seller again.
What convinced me was that he sent through photocopies of his drivers license and work ID…
And you didn't do anything with that information?
The drivers license and work id were probalby fake….
Three instances:
- When I was 17 I tried to buy a fake ID where the seller wanted a western union transfer (yes clearly I am an idiot).
- Bought a 32GB micro SD card a few years back on ebay which was fake. Didn't know what to do so never got a refund.
- Bought some headphones on ebay which were counterfeit. Contacted the seller and he refunded the money but I had to pay $20 shipping to send them back. He sounded genuinely surpised that they were fake, although he could have been full of bs.
This was all before I had discovered Ozbargain. Now I buy most of my stuff from links I see here, and the community's scam detector is much stronger than mine.
Buy fake ID… Starting out as a scammer? :D
got scammed once by an overseas small time online store, happened 3 months after original purchase (which arrived on time) but it was flagged by card provider, never went through.
also got hacked twice on steam and lost about $500 in dota 2 items :(
i got scammed twice. first thing was worth $1400. Second thing was worth $250. Never got my money back.
My first two purchases on eBay, before PayPal and the buyer protection they have.
Microsoft Mouse $8 never arrived
SanDisk 256MB Flash drive $80 - faulty product, seller never responded.So far, those were the last times.
facebooks buy swap sell groups.. I've just listed a computer monitor and i've had 2 people over the course of the day say they want it, say all the right things. Ask me to mark it as sold. Arrange to pick it up and ask for my address and then back out of the sale. I hate that I gave them my address… wish I had said to meet me at a coles carpark nearby or something like that but doing that always screams that I'm the scammer.
I get the same thing with Gumtree.
What do they gain from this, why do they want the address?
And if you say "outside Coles", they insist on your address and then back out…I suspect in some cases it's not so much your details that they are after but more so that they're peddling the same stuff at a higher price and want you off the market so they can cash in. I had the same with car rims I was selling, turns out the admin of the site had the same rims and kept creating fake accounts to lure me into removing it. Because I didn't bite he deleted my ad to which (this pre-date flood protection days), I wrote a script that created the ad everytime the previous ad URL displayed page not found errors. :-)
I think it's more that they find it cheaper elsewhere or they don't have the cash right now.
Listed my dads 4WD on Gumtree and had someone call up about it, said he wanted to view it. Gave him the address but he never showed. 1 week later it was stolen. Maybe coincidence…
sure enough, my suspicions were spot on. 10 minutes after giving out my address to this guy I got an email from twitter account had some unusual activity and sent a temporary password. I just deleted my twitter account as I hate it anyway.
I have a few times on Ebay (mainly sellers from China). Bought a texas graphics calculator however, they sent some $2 calculator instead. Tried to return it and they claimed they never received it. Ended up losing around $60, which was annoying because I was a poor student at the time.
Another time, I bought a dyson from Gumtree. Seller claimed it was brand new however, when i looked at the serial number, it was a 2009 model. His interpretation of brand new was buying it 2nd hand from somebody else.
Bahaha. Are you the wife or the husband?
No comment
No way on the last part… You're just trying to be funny, right?
LOL you're a funny guy. XD
Bought 2 pairs of vans from eBay 5 years ago and got 2 keychains delivered instead. Didn't know about PayPal disputes back then so had to cop it
Scammed by powerseller on ebay selling either counterfeit and/or old versions of phllips LED down lights. Ebay sided with the seller and told me to bad. Had to on sell at a loss of about 50%
I had a charge for about 70 bucks for a parking fine in a council I'd never been to show up on my credit card
CBA sorted it
I paid full price for an HDMI cable from JB-HI.
ohh man, you poor soul!
Its like walking into Hardly Normal and buying a dialup modem for $300
I posted a WTB ad in Gumtree for a camera few years ago. Got a phone call saying they are from Melbourne camera shop and wanting to get rid of stock, so selling cheap. I ask his shop name and he gave me Melbourne Electronics or something including his bogus email. He gave me his account name and number so I can transfer… and I did, $650 of it.
He called and wondered if I deposit in branch or online. I said online and he said that would take a day to come through and hoped it was in branch.. but he said nevermind, he will wait.
The day after, his number is off. No trace of him. Bankwest couldn't reverse the money. Police is not interested to check the account name and holder.
I bet if you read this you would smack me over my head for not seeing the red lights all over the place……. but I'm not sure why. I'm usually careful.. I think that day either I was hypnotised, or just foolishly fallen into his 'convincing' speech over the phone
Still couldn't believe I fell for it to this very day……….
Had a similar occurrence with an iPhone except I actually deposited in branch. Great thing was the police actually did their job for once!
The only thing that was different was that this was on a forum (OCAU) and the moderators were more than willing to give the cops the IP address of the seller, which gave them a location.
Probably why they bothered with it since it would have been super easy.
1.5 years later, I got a cheque with the scammed amount AND a letter of apology. Hooray for social services.
NEWS FLASH!
Great thing was the police actually did their job for once!
Yay for ocau.
I trade heaps (around $2k buy and sell now) on ocau, and i usually just blindly trust people when buying (well that's what you have to do i guess). I have also posted things out before money has even cleared sometimes.
The moderators have done pretty well to foster a trusting community there. It is a shame when people take advantage of that though - but just goes to show the support you get if anything does go wrong!
$700 laptop on eBay— empty box with a few scraps in it. Lodged a complaint through PayPal and got every cent back as the seller's grace period passed. If the seller doesn't at least make some kind of response within 14 days, the situation goes entirely in your favour.
When I was younger, I bought a pair of UE headphones for super expensive. I remember my mum bought it for me as a birthday present.
Came in from USA, and was dead on arrival when I got them.
I contacted the seller immediately, and the seller asked me to send it back to USA to claim as part of warranty, which I did.
After sending it out, never heard back from him again.
ACCC/Consumer Affairs don't care because the seller is international. From then I learnt an expensive lesson which was check where buyers are located and if it's only a slight difference in price for Australian seller vs international seller, go for the Australian! It will make your online shopping life so much easier.
Bought some pre-workout for gym from a powerseller on eBay once. I had taken the stuff before so I knew what the effects were and the texture of the powder was. When it arrived it was waaaay overfilled and it literally felt like flour. Where as the original product had more of a grainy texture, and A LOT more kick too. Sad thing was he never really had negative feedback so suckers were purchasing this stuff and just gaining a placebo effect thinking it helped them at gym.
Opened a dispute with Paypal and got my money back, love paypal at times.
Were you buying unbranded workout supplements?
One word…gumtreeeee
Bought some DVDs from a seller in Canada when I was younger. Never received them and couldn't contact seller. I was eventually contacted by another ebay member who had the same thing happen to them, along with 10 or 15 other people. I believe the police were involved but not sure what happened after that. Got a partial refund from Ebay in the end.
Trusted a girl on the gaming friends list. She asked if she can borrow an item worth 50$ in market value (which I was not aware of as I didn't trade and the items were random drops) as I knew that girl for a long time I gave it to her. As soon I transferred the item, no reply messages. Immediately knew I got scammed, checked the value of those items and felt the heartache.
She was probably also a guy.
No. We became facebook friends she has an old profile with hundreds of pics with new pics and active friends.
Because it's not hard to impersonate someone on Facebook by using their photos and adding randoms.
Still possible.
@ronnknee: Too tedious when friends are of the same age and location, similar education and workplaces.
Scammed once on eBay, bought $40 worth of laser toner cartridges, year was around 2005. Payment was by direct transfer into a bank account, it was way before PayPal was widespread, and everyone I had dealt with before was honest, and seller's account had good feedback. I had his land-line phone number for some reason. Goods never arrived, seller's eBay account was deleted, and eBay emailed me to warn that I may have been scammed. Called the phone number in Queensland, got his wife, turned out he had been away with the navy off in Timor, she didn't know where he was now but "was probably off with his girlfriend", and his wife was divorcing him and called him a totally useless cheating scumbag, multiple screaming kids in the background, the whole bit. Mentally wrote it off as a dead loss, and stopped me from using eBay for several years. I do now, but what I learned is PayPal only for non-face-to-face online auctions or where I have any doubt at all about the store, and also don't hesitate to dispute if goods don't arrive within 5 weeks.
Plus I've had credit cards with unauthorized purchases 2 or 3 times, but for all of those there was no out of pocket cost to me, just the hassle of organizing a new card.
Yes! At the start of the year, I was selling my iPhone 6 plus 128gb for $790.
Price and meeting place was agreed.
He pulled up in front of the penthouse I was staying in and met up with him.
He tells me to get in the car and close the door because of the aircon.
I don't do it but I get in and have my leg hanging out in case he tries to do something to me and I can make a quick dash.
He inspects the phone. All good.
He hands me the money. I count it in front of him. All there. $790.
An hour later I reach into my pocket to feel the money again but it felt odd. It didn't quite have the texture of money I was use to.
I pull out the notes and inspect closely the 100 dollar bill and the 50 dollar bill. The colours seem a bit off.
I have a $50 note in my wallet and pull it out for comparison and the windows of the bill don't match, the colours don't match.
All but $40 was real and the $750 was fake. Fake Australian cash!
Could not believe I got jibbed for fake cash in Australia.Moral of the story: only use paypal…
People can still screw you over on PayPal.
Yeah that's true but It's usually easier to sift the fake. Well for me anyways
What did you do with the counterfeit money? Did you tell the police about your ordeal?
Yeah they took the money and I gave as much details as I could but they probably did nothing
. Imagine if you just brushed it off and said to yourself meh, ceebs checking it, not a professional money checker and continued shopping and pretended you didnt know anything.
haha well that thought did come to me for a second but after googling the penalties for using counterfeit money (2 years max in jail) I decided against it…
Not everyone has internet or mobile/computer. I just think the person spending the counterfeit money shouldnt really be the blame as it should really be the person making it ..
I saw something on social media that someone in China bought an iPhone 7 and received 'iPhone 4, iPhone 3 and a Chinese magic spell card'.
and a Chinese magic spell card
It was a Yu-Gi-Oh card named Polymerization, which allowed you to fuse two monsters together, hence the combination of the iphone 4 + iphone 3 = iphone 7.
$3000 , i was promised a macbook pro that never came…………………………………..
alot of threats later, i go my money back about 2 months later.
some unpleasantness was going to unfold if i didnt.$3000 , i was promised a macbook pro that never came…………………………………..
alot of threats later, i go my money back about 2 months later.
some unpleasantness was going to unfold if i didnt.What are the odds of that happening to the same person twice?
Was about to write the same thing. 😀
$3000 , i was promised a macbook pro that never came…………………………………..
alot of threats later, i go my money back about 2 months later.
some unpleasantness was going to unfold if i didnt.
Listed an item for free on Gumtree. Was taking up space, old but in poor condition. Was big and heavy so picked up from home.
The next weekend guy comes back and asks if I know anything more about the item, history of it etc or where it came from as 'those things are worth lots'. Yeah, thanks bud. At least he had trouble finding me again and cost him a drive around a different suburb.
Sorry but what's the scam here?
Uhh… What?
Got scammed on eBay once - bought some tablets with great specs for Xmas a few years back. Price seemed a little too good to be true but the seller had great reviews so me and a mate bought a few each. Never delivered and no response to enquiries. PayPal provided refund.
Another item bought off COTD was nothing like what was described. COTD refused to refund it and that was 5 years back. I refuse to purchase from them again and don't look at their site at all. They lost a good customer over $30.
Had similar experience with COTD 10 years ago, now I'm on their banned list vice versa.
No. But I've unwittingly scammed someone :(
Go on…
Ordered an item online and was sent the tracking number and advised that I should expect to receive it within 10 business days.
6 days later, the tracking showed that it had arrived in Australia. I patiently waited another week or so and it still hadn't been delivered, so I contacted the seller and was asked to wait at least 30 days from date of shipment before contacting them. So I waited and waited and waited and still nothing. Finally filed a declaration of non-receipt of goods form after checking multiple times with my local post office. The seller processed the refund.
49 days after I paid for the item, it turned up in my letterbox.
scammer
Edit wrong thread.
Twice. First time was "Bronze Moon Outdoors", which was essentially resolved after moths and months of fighting. Second was more recently, with the "Lumen" torch on Kickstarter. Guy got funded and ran off with $150k USD.
I've heard plenty of bs kickstarter stories tbh.
I've done around 35 kickstarter campaigns so far, and this is the first time I've really been burned. I broke my own rule of not funding someones first project.
$200 gosh Can't even share that embarrassing story.
she had a dick?
LOL didn't even turn up! shhhhh!
Can confirm. The company I work for sells products to many large companies, banks, and government departments. Because of this, I have to get clearance for all those companies. I've had to do three different government baseline clearances since I started here last year, and I've had a couple of extra police checks done.