turboman786

We have all seen them......cars being sold for a lot less than their market price...some nice photos, sometimes even a detailed and genuine sounding description.....yet they only operate via email and it soon transires that the car is apparently abroad, and will be shipped after payment is made to an escrow account...


They are so obvious, and ebay is full of them........but more worryingly there are lots appearing on pistonheads

So, why do these website tolerate such blatantly fraudulent ads...ebay claims to be protecting the consumer, yet appears to be happy to take the money off these fraudsters....

Dracoro

Well they (PH at least) do NOT tolerate them. Once raised to mod team, they get removed. Or should they stop people advertising under market value(which is???).

Anyway, who falls for these ads apart from the gullible and terminally stupid? a 2 year old M3 does not go for £6k so why bother responding?

Chip Sencurry

EXACTLY!

turboman786

Very true, but someone must bite, or else so many ads wouldnt be out there!

Dracoro

So, let them try. If people are stupid enough to respond then they deserved to be scammed. There must be a lot of stupid people out there since, as you say, many ads are out there.

A fool and his money is easily parted.

sulli

Yes i've contacted one from PH and one on Autotrader. The AT one even resulted in an email purporting to be from Autotrader confirming the ad's legitimacy (it actually looked a fairly legit email).
Not much chance of me getting caught out, but I am trying to catch them out - you never know

nooobyscooby

They shouldn't be allowed to advertise unless they give a mobile and landline number.

falkster

You're trying to get them to transfer money to you and send you the car?

Shark Man

It's quite simple to restrict: Foreign IP addresses shouldn't be able to post web adverts for Uk based sales....so that would sort out Pistonheads and Autotrader in one simple swoop.

OK proxies would get round it, but you try finding a UK based proxy; It's not that easy in my experience unless you have a harvest of drone computers based in the UK infected with a virus that you have control of. Which I think is beyond the level of the average Nigerian scammer (credit due if they can do it, not that I condone it).

Terminator X

iTrader: (7)

They do it because the can catch 2% of the population & just that small amount makes it worthwhile. Fairly easy to find the gullible 2%

TX.

lestippp

I seen a Cayman S up for £20k!!!! in Autotrader on a 06 plate!! Sent the advertiser an email and I reported them to the fraud office

Got a reply in broken English along the lines of:

"who you man speaking to me... blah blah blah"

This is such a blatant crime and goes mostly unpunished. Then again, it's much easier to stick a camera at the side of a long bit of straight road and catch some evil people speeding, as opposed to putting in some real police work to catch "real" criminals

Sorry on my soap box again.

fivetide

iTrader: (1)

As said though, if you get scammed then really what did you expect? Obvious that there is something dodgy. What amazes me is that people clearly do fall for it along with all the other junk email you get. If people didn't reply they wouldn't do it. I mean who replies to GeNuiNE roLex Replicas???

5t.

Dream Weaver

What about the ones very close to the line though, in market value terms, such as this ad below:

Ford : RS Turbo

It's a Focus RS, 52 plate for £8995, all looks legit and very near to me but I am wary of it for some reason as they usually go for £12k plus.

Tidgy

if you think thats bad type in mcrae and see what comes up, the only ever series mcrae was a uk edition, but a 55 v limited has mcraes signature on the seat so they call it a series mcrae

Subaru : STI TYPE RA SERIES McRAE(#27)

Subaru : STI TYPE RA SERIES McRAE(#27) (JDM)

and a real series mcrae

Subaru : Series McRae No111

MooseRacer

To be fair it does say needs TLC. If it's near to you then I dont see the problem - get it FULLY inspected and checked and you should be fine.

Dream Weaver

Was just looking out of interest, fancying a P1 at the minute