Scam heads up while selling your used goods

Complaints Corner
1
Hi everyone,

I have bumped into this two times already and want to raise awareness. I sell used stuff on FB marketplace/ebay/etc. and lately I am being approached by seemingly authentic would be buyers which turn out to be scammers.

They will send you a pre-canned message saying that they want your product but they are always either busy or far away and can only:

1. send a courier such as Fedex Express to deliver you an envelope with cash. Big red scam alert here!

2. send another courier to pick up the goods.

It seems that this is the latest trend in scamming and you can search Google for "people offering to send envelop with cash" to find other victims.

I had this offer two times now in my FB Marketplace account with very obviously fishy profiles. The first one was a FB profile of a dutch looking guy with full African name. The second profile, the writing was a copy paste of a pre-canned message and the guy was from the Ivory coast trying to pull the scam with his/her real profile.

I don't know how the scam works exactly because I never experimented accepting cash in envelops to start with but I can imagine couple of ways this can go wrong very quickly.

So if you are desperate to recover some cash selling your used goods beware!

2

Already a thread about this here: https://www.englishforum.ch/daily-li…ml#post3428088

With this explanation for how it works:

3
We've had this scam many times on Facebook Marketplace. It's annoying. We block them and move on. We also specify that we only accept payment via TWINT or IBAN, no cash. That helps sort the wheat from the chaff.

We mostly use Ricardo and Tutti when we're selling anything of value now, you get a lot less of that.

4
We only accept cash.

Tom

5
Before you block them, it benefit others is your report the buyer to FB.

6
Yes, we do this as well, thanks for the correction.

7
My cellar is now full of these couriers... it's becoming expensive feeding them while I await for a ransom to be paid by the scammers in order to release them.

8
You mean something like this :

9
They are a plague, trying to sell some stuff on tutti and the scam comes up. Thanks a lot for the heads up.

10
Exactly like that. personally I see no point in letting them know that I think it's a scam.

On the other hand, you might want to just string them along (scam-baiting).

The other scam to watch out for is where someone sends you a check for more than the sale price, saying that his shipping agent will pick the item up, but you have to use the extra money to pay the pick-up guy.

A few weeks later your bank will discover that the check was stolen and it debits your account. There might be other consequences for you (accepting stolen checks).

11
I wouldn’t accept a cheque under any circumstances. You have to pay to cash them in Switzerland.

12
It is not only facebook, Tutti as well.

It is very annoying.

The best way to make these people go away is to ignore them and block them. Both are options on Tutti.

Asking for a phone number also seems to make them disappear.

13
In Tutti on sign of a scammy approach is if they immediately want to take the communication offline and ask for a phone number (this allows them to circumvent Tutti's monitoring). My advice is to only provide a phone number when it is a matter to actually arrange pickup or payment via Twint.

14
The first contact over Tutti seemed legit, said they had a few more questions about the item (more dimensions) and wanted to call me. I replied that it was easier to answer questions in writing.

Their next response was the offer to have the post office pick it up. The item I am selling is a 180 x 200 bed. Clearly the post office is not going to pick that up! I didn't answer. The username of this scammer is "Cindy". They wrote to me in German (even though my ad is not in German!)