KeithS Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 Having just advertised my SEi in the for sale section, I'm delighted to say that it didn't take long before I was contacted by three different members regarding buying the car. The deal looks to be going through this week. Great! However, as a warning to members selling cars/parts, this morning I get an e-mail from an anonymous person in France (their e-mail was tagged 'Envoyé de mon iPhone', which is a bit of a giveaway, although it could be from one of France's former African territories, of course!) offering to send me £500 immediately and then offering me DOUBLE what I had the car advertised for. No questions about the vehicle, no request for more photos, no discussion. The e-mail address ended in 'earlsclassics.com' but when you visit that site, although it purports to be a classic car dealers, the website is little more than a template page, with no details, no phone number, etc, and an address that turns out to be an incomplete provincial industrial development. So, rather than giving away bank details, address, phone number etc, I'll do business for 'less' money with a WSCC member in the UK, thanks... 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Kinder (Bagpuss) - Joint Peak District AO Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 1 hour ago, KeithS said: Having just advertised my SEi in the for sale section, I'm delighted to say that it didn't take long before I was contacted by three different members regarding buying the car. The deal looks to be going through this week. Great! However, as a warning to members selling cars/parts, this morning I get an e-mail from an anonymous person in France (their e-mail was tagged 'Envoyé de mon iPhone', which is a bit of a giveaway, although it could be from one of France's former African territories, of course!) offering to send me £500 immediately and then offering me DOUBLE what I had the car advertised for. No questions about the vehicle, no request for more photos, no discussion. The e-mail address ended in 'earlsclassics.com' but when you visit that site, although it purports to be a classic car dealers, the website is little more than a template page, with no details, no phone number, etc, and an address that turns out to be an incomplete provincial industrial development. So, rather than giving away bank details, address, phone number etc, I'll do business for 'less' money with a WSCC member in the UK, thanks... Sorry to read this. However this is one of the reasons we suggest not to put your email address in adverts on here. This way only existing members will make contact via PM and you can research their history on here to see how long they've been in the club and how they've interacted with members in the past. I'd still suggest you remove your e-mail address from your advert, as spam bots trawl the web for such info too. I'm not surprised your car went so fast as it was a great price and you've been very honest in your ad. Thanks for sharing your experience with the club and best wishes for the future. You may be back here one day! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dibby Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 These scams have been around for donkeys years. I sold my old MkII Escort in the early 00's when the internet was young. The fella posted his £5000 cheque for my beaten up rustbucket £500 Escort made out to my agent, a Mr Hugh G. Rection. Also asked for proof of ID by holding up a sign with the date and a code word, and a flipflop on his head. It was fun winding scam artists up back in the day. If something on the internet appears too good to be true, it probably is. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quinten Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 13 minutes ago, Dibby said: Mr Hugh G. Rection 🤣 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 Also, please be aware that simply trying to hide your email my mixing it up a bit with other words, hiding the "@" and "." symbols etc hasn't worked against the serious tools those gathering addresses from on-line pages use - someone, as an example once, years ago, posted a (readily available) snippet of the code used to reconstruct such obfuscated addresses as a warning of how easy it was. - it didn't take that many lines of code to undo all peoples typical attempts to make addresses "unreadable by machine". I've no doubt scraping tools etc have got way more advanced, since then thanks to AI etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KeithS Posted January 26, 2021 Author Share Posted January 26, 2021 Noted and done! As a journalist/editor, my e-mail is pretty much in the public domain, but not too bothered as I can block messages easily. However, I'm amazed that people are still trying this on these days. But I guess if they automatically send out several thousand such 'offers' at the click of a mouse, then maybe, just maybe, one or two people might fall for it. As for returning to the fold, I'd love another Westy at some point in the future. Having grown up in the 1960s when Lotus 7s were the bees-knees, I have always had a hankering for one. Well, genuine Sevens are out of my price range, and Westies are far better value than Caterhams (how to start a war on Facebook...). So let's see what the future holds! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim RS Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 General rule is to send a query via the platform you are advertising on(not by your emal), usually as you say they are automated and cannot handle the reply, if they do not answer your query they are not bonafide. Normal rule applies "if it sounds to good to be true it probably is false". 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 Sadly a lot of this stuff is automated to huge extents, with machines just churning through vast numbers of web pages and sending out such huge numbers of messages that even a 0.1% hit rate is still significant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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