My bike is up for sale. Just got these emails. Possible scam? | GTAMotorcycle.com

My bike is up for sale. Just got these emails. Possible scam?

Zoodles95

Zoodles95

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First email (sent from Autotrader):

Hi, I found your listing on autoTRADER.ca and would like to know more about the vehicle. Please send me more information about the 1981 Honda CB750 Custom. Thank you.

I respond back with some particulars and get this response:

I'm satisfied with the details provided on the Ad. So just let me know your best price

So, I come up with a price with extra parts but no riding gear and get this email:

Alright,i think the price is fair enough, so just send me your paypal email so that i can make the payment

I am happy to hold the bike with a Paypal deposit until they come and see the bike but Paypal takes a % hit off of the seller and nowadays Paypal will refund money with little provocation. Who would pay out for a bike they have not even seen?

Is this a scam or just a weird interaction?
 
Zoodles95 said:
First email (sent from Autotrader):

Hi, I found your listing on autoTRADER.ca and would like to know more about the vehicle. Please send me more information about the 1981 Honda CB750 Custom. Thank you.

I respond back with some particulars and get this response:

I'm satisfied with the details provided on the Ad. So just let me know your best price

So, I come up with a price with extra parts but no riding gear and get this email:

Alright,i think the price is fair enough, so just send me your paypal email so that i can make the payment

I am happy to hold the bike with a Paypal deposit until they come and see the bike but Paypal takes a % hit off of the seller and nowadays Paypal will refund money with little provocation. Who would pay out for a bike they have not even seen?

Is this a scam or just a weird interaction?
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Most likely a scam. They'll do a chargeback once they pick the bike up.
 
100% Scam.. avoid

No one would buy a 1981 bike via paypal. I don't mean that as a insult, I mean they would want to see it and look it over.
 
Jampy00 said:
100% Scam.. avoid

No one would buy a 1981 bike via paypal. I don't mean that as a insult, I mean they would want to see it and look it over.
Click to expand...

That's what I thought (no insult taken). I even said that. Let's just do a deposit and they can come and look it over and then we go to the M.T.O.

This email came in the past couple of minutes:

Alright, just send me your paypal email to make the payment asap

Jeesh... The nutters come out of the woodwork. No wonder so many people just do trades with the dealer. With my bike I either need to sell to another person who likes a vintage bike or wants to use it for a project.
 
Wowsa... Now the emails are getting urgent. Offering an extra $100 to offset the Paypal charges I incur as a seller.

I told them I will hold the bike until Friday if they want to see it. A fair number of tire kickers but I know a bike like this will not sell quick. May or may not happen. Worst case scenario I keep it and keep riding it the rest of the season. I have it dialed in pretty good now so it is not like my first season where I spend half the time catching up on deferred maintenance and fixing things.
 
There is no "they", it's a bot. The only time a human becomes involved is when a seller gives the bot a paypal address.
 
smc said:
There is no "they", it's a bot. The only time a human becomes involved is when a seller gives the bot a paypal address.
Click to expand...

Not going so well now. Down to one work answers!

My latest response to them:

Hi,

"If you want to send E transfer we can do that.


Just the same you are welcome to come and see the bike tomorrow or sometime later in the week. I am not in a rush. If it does not sell I just enjoy riding it another year. :)


Mark"

And they replied:

No


​I guess I just block the email address?
 
Scam, scam, scam. If your email address isn't particularly telling/identifiable, you could yank their chain and waste a bunch of their time at this point. If nothing else it could provide entertainment value here when you post their responses, and hell, the more time you waste of theirs the less time they have to try to scam others.

Come to think of it, if you're communicating through Kijiji it uses an email munging system now so they don't have your actual (real) email address, so you can yank away.

Tell them that you're satisfied with the deal and are happy to receive the money via PayPal, but give them Oprah's email address instead - Oprah@oprah.com. I'm sure she could use the money. :)

If they're dumb enough to fall for that, start giving them random excuses for delays in continuing the deal.. I played with a scammer for about 2 weeks a few years ago. By the end I had just about every Canadian cliche I could come up with as part of every email (there were maple syrup spills, polar bears trying to break into my house, crippling snowstorms in August, etc) and they STILL weren't getting the fact that I was wasting their time..which didn't surprise me since their IP addresses came back to some third world country.

I think eventually when I told them that I needed them to send me another $50 to cover the bank fees to receive their first payment they finally clued in that I was trying to scam them instead.
 
You sir have a wicked sense of humor. :)

I did do something kind of similar with one of those bogus Microsoft tech help calls. Guy was just about to lose his head after an hour or so...
 
What's to stop you from taking their $ and not giving them anything?
 
RockerGuy said:
What's to stop you from taking their $ and not giving them anything?
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The paypal email you receive *looks* real, but is not. They never actually send you any money, they just try to convince you they have, and for people who believe the fake email and never actually login to their PayPal account to verify the funds are there (which, they are not), this is where they get you.

I played stupid with this part and spent probably 2 days just on this alone. I first said my "mouse thingie" wasn't working so I couldn't login to my PayPal account, and then I lost my password, and then the generator that powered my village went out for a few days when it was attacked by a polar bear so I couldn't get back to them even though they were furiously emailing me every few hours thinking they had a fish on the line.

Like I said, I had all sorts of fun. Towards the end I was sending them such insane crap that any idiot with 2 braincells to rub together should have been able to figure out they were being yanked, but they just kept on going.
 
For those with a sense of humor about scamming the scammers, here's some good reading - www.419eater.com

There are some classic ones on that site. :D
 
Scaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-*breath*- aaaaaaaam.
Stay away.
 
I was just reading about this scam in this month's Motorcycle News.

Sent from my custom purple Joe Bass mobile device using Tapatalk
 
I don't know for you guys but I'm thinking in a transaction, the other party needs to come correct: no paypal, nor western union wire transfer, there needs to be a certain sense of connection first before talking money. The least somone can fo is come to see the bike before talking money.

Scam!!!

... and the good thing about etransfer u get to see the money on the account but u can't go wrong with cash tho :)

Sent from my MotoG3 using Tapatalk
 
Cash is plastic bills only. None of that old school paper ish for me

Sent from my custom purple Joe Bass mobile device using Tapatalk
 
clyder said:
I don't know for you guys but I'm thinking in a transaction, the other party needs to come correct: no paypal, nor western union wire transfer, there needs to be a certain sense of connection first before talking money. The least somone can fo is come to see the bike before talking money.

Scam!!!

... and the good thing about etransfer u get to see the money on the account but u can't go wrong with cash tho :)

Sent from my MotoG3 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Easier said than done when working long hours in Nigeria. Have agent send driver. It'll be fine.
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