Hungrytang

Im currently selling my wifes old 206cc runaround on ebay.

Got this message from a buyer.....

Hello!

I am interested to buy the car and I have a few questions before making an offer.
Is there any problem with the engine of the car? Is there anything that needs to be changed?
Would you accept a bank transfer ? If not, then would you accept cash in hand?
We would really appreciate if you could forward larger scaled pictures. You could forward the same pictures as the images used in your eBay add. You still have them in your laptop/pc, do you? If you send them by e-mail, the photos are larger scaled and we could have a better look.
Could you please forward these pictures and any other more to annagstv [ at ] yahoo [ dot ] com ?
Thank you for your time.

Best regards,
Anna Gustavson

So I emailed over the pics....

Got this email today....

Hello again Stu,

Thank you for your email!
We are willing to buy the car via eBay. After that, next week, I will come over to your location. I will pay in cash or by bank transfer. It's up to you.
But before planning the trip I have to make sure that the car is exactly as advertised. Please excuse my suspicious nature. I don't mean to offend you, but I've had some bad experiences in the past so I'd like to clear all of those doubts before bidding and planning the trip. Because of course that would cost extra time and money.
I have already contacted an inspection company who forwarded the attached inspection document for your car. Please find the document attached to this email. The password to open the rar file is "ebay" . After opening the archive file with the password, you will find the inspection document inside together with a copy of my driver's license. There are only a few general questions regarding the actual state of the vehicle. Please try to answer each question as honestly as possible. At the end, the program will compile a text document with a complete report. So please forward the text document to my email when the process is done. Also please let me know if there are any special remarks you need to make that are not included in the respective inspection document.

The document might not be working on MAC. So please use it on a PC.

Thank you for your time!

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,
Anna Gustavson


Sound dodgy?
I haven't opened the link as I have a Mac.
The ebay account seams genuine with a feedback of 737 and open since 2003 but I think may be hacked?
Also there from France.... Who come over from France to buy a £1500 car.

Is this a new scam or just one i haven heard of?

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

I think you have answered your own question in your next to last paragraph... who comes across from France to buy a French car?

Write back and say you're not doing any report or the likes, the car is ready to be sold as per the advert, tell them to come and look at it if they want to inspect it/buy it!

You won't hear from them again!

abre

I think you may also find the rar is a Trojan horse type virus hence the comment about Macs...

ScoobyNoob79

I'll guarantee the rar file drops a keylogger when extracted, it will write itself to system32 directory hence the Mac statement.

Once installed it will "phone home" with logged keystrokes, hopefully bank details...

warrenm2

" At the end, the program will compile a text document with a complete report" so its an exe is it? Looks like a trojan

RobsyUK

iTrader: (2)

Forward the email to ebay so they can email all users not to download the attachment.

LSherratt

iTrader: (1)

I'm just glad I have a mac! Gives me a little bit extra peace of mind.

hodgy0_2

I Would email them back, saying you indeed have opened it on your Mac (explain that being a Mac user means you rarely read instructions which is why you did not open it on a PC first)

Anyway it has opened fine and you should have all questions answered by the EOP

But could you have their Bank details, as this has been requested by your bank - to confirm any subsequent inter country bank transfer

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Joke of the day!

Ebay do not give a ****!

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

I wouldn't get too cocky as with the Mac on the rise and a lot of complacnet users their time will come!

dnc

Agree, has to happen.

David_Dickson

While the rest of it is a scam, its fairly common for French people to buy cheap UK cars as French prices are significantly higher than UK. Yes, they will be RHD, but when the car costs less than half the local price, this is a small inconvenience.

I live in France and have returned to UK dozens of times and bought various cars including several Citroen vans and recently a Citroen C2 VTS.

The VTS was my latest purchase - all in it cost me £1500 in uk...flight over, buy the car, drive it back and re-register it in France. Buying one in the same condition here would have cost me 3.5 - 4k Euros.

LVC

Yep me too - live in France and all my cars are UK sourced including a £1000 Saxo VTS from a few years back.

However even from the first email you can tell it's a scam

ScoobyWon't

Can you bring my a Citroen HY van over from France next time you need to pick up a vehicle from the UK?

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

I think you'll find that while one or two may buy from the UK a far more popular choice is to buy from Belgium as the cars are cheaper than France and, crucially, are LHD.

Amongst ex-pats of course the tendency to still buy from the UK will be high, but the French looking for a secondhand bargain will usually go to Belgium!

David_Dickson

I think you will find that Belgium is no longer all that much cheaper than France...perhaps 10 to 20% at best, but UK is still AT LEAST 50% cheaper and often significantly more. I import UK cars for French people as they have cottoned on to the vast savings but are unwilling to do it themselves due to language etc.

Spain is a fair bit cheaper than France, but their paperwork system makes the French mess look organised and efficient, so completing sale paperwork is often an affair dragged out over a few days and several visits to various departments.....not ideal if you just want to pop over the border and pick up a cheap runabout.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

OK well seems like things have changed then as to be fair I am basing my opinion on 6/7 years ago when I had two sets of friends living in France and then Belgum was widely accepted as the place to go car shopping.

Have to say if I lived in Europe there is no way I'd want a RHD car to use day in day out, but maybe that's just me. Overtaking is a bloody lottery if you are sitting on the wrong side of the car!

David_Dickson

It makes no real difference day to day - I live in an agricultural area so lots of tractors and lorries on twisty roads - decent positioning on the road and being able to see down the RH side of the truck mean its no better or worse than LHD.

On the down side, the burgersmiths at Mcdonalds get upset if you reverse round the drive-through.

dnc

jaygsi

iTrader: (46)

I have someone buy a car off me from france arranged date and time, no show

But sold engine to guy in Germany, who owned a car company, and he showed up, but i wouldn't fill anything out, way to much hassle

LVC

That's spot on - the majority of the French drive badly by sitting no more than 2" off the rear bumper of the car in Front and go for the suicide manoeuvre in order to see if it's clear to overtake. As long as you leave the correct distance between you and the car in front overtaking in a RHD over here is no bigger deal than in a LHD. Obviously much easier with a Subaru than a Citroen as overtaking is quicker - I usually manage to overtake at least the lorry as well as the 2 or 3 French cars stuck up it's exhaust - love the look on their faces as you cruise by cos you could see the road ahead was clear but they couldn't.

Péages are also a pain in the whatsit as you have to get out and go around unless you have a passenger or are on the Calais autoroute (they even have RHD Péages, lol).

Price is not the only factor - UK cars are usually much better condition than the French ones with lower mileage to boot. Bought my GT2000 for 5k€ in the UK and resold it 3 months later to a chap from Paris for 10k€ - French version in 2010 was an easy 14k€.

Where about in France are you Mr. Dickson ?

David_Dickson

I am in the Tarn, Albi / Castres area.
You?

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Sorry, but this makes no sense. Why aren't we all driving LHD cars in the UK then? I used to drive quite a bit in Europe and at first I used to ferry across in my own car, but I soon found having LHD was enormously advantageous in terms of seeing to pull out in the majoirty of circumstances.

LVC

Loire Valley - between Le Mans and Tours

I'm not saying that having a LHD car in Europe is not better, just that if you leave enough room between you and the car in front then it really makes naff all difference. Depending upon the car there's not even 1m difference between the two "head positions" (driver and passenger) so your field of vision is not really that different "IF" you leave enough room in front of you - moving the car to (not crossing) the white line allows me to see enough of the road coming up to overtake or not. As stated most French drive right up the exhaust of the car/lorry in front of them and as such can see naff all of the road ahead having to pull right out to see anything at all. All depends on how you drive I guess, I try and be "smooth and safe" with my manoeuvres rather than "all or nothing" ... years of bike riding taught me that you live longer the more you can see.

For the record my girlfriend is French and now drives UK cars over here - no problem for her either (and she's a nutter behind the wheel ). I also had a German LHD Porsche 911C4 in the UK and found that no problem to drive either.

pslewis

E-mail back and say that the form loaded, but after answering a few questions, it said that the car was scrap ....... would they still like to purchase?