Possible Scam On A Used Car?

[Paul-J]

Mate stay well away, this is defo a scam.....there are hundreds of them going on on eBay. Before I found the Lexus I was looking at a few other cars ans I had the same story with slight variations on about 6 different cars!!

Ans when I was selling my old car I had a similar request for me to ship it to the netherlands.....And this was a 02' citreon Xsara worth about 2k

[graham8370]

AJ, It's a scam.

Between Bullets 3 and 4 there should be Bullet 3A: Seller receives the shipping and insurance costs from eBay,but not the price of the vehicle. ''If you dont accept the car it will be transported back at her expense'' She doesn't care how much this will cost as she already knows that the car will never be shipped to you anyway.

Why is she advertising the car in Autotrader and wanting payment through eBay?

The eBay protection only covers cars sold through eBay. Covers you up to 20,000 dollars (not sterling).

As said before ''If it sounds too good to be true, IT IS''

[A.J]

…..all good points and now Im sure its a lemon!

strangely enough the HPI checked based on just the reg. plate came up as it is the car it says it is- except the mileage is a few thousand out.....which suggests to me that its just a random plate that they’ve seen on this type of car and then they guessed the rest!

Curiosity says have you got her email address, is it a UK, Nigerian or Czech?

the email address is _________ @yahoo.co.uk but its nothing like the name shes given its another ladies name.

All sounds good till you READ THE 4TH BULLET

that’s a good point I didn’t even notice that - and I cant find a similar offer on the uk eBay site!

Between Bullets 3 and 4 there should be Bullet 3A: Seller receives the shipping and insurance costs from Ebay,but not the price of the vehicle. ''If you dont accept the car it ill be transported back at her expense'' She doesn't care how much this will cost as she already knows that the car will never be shipped to you anyway.

Why is she advertising the car in Autotrader and wanting payment through Ebay?

The Ebay protection only covers cars sold through Ebay. Covers you up to 20,000 dollars (not sterling).

-definetly makes sense…out of interest where did you read about seller recieving the shipping cost first, cos by the sounds of it thats the real 'catch' in it.

my initial feeling was to go in for a second round of questioning and try to get more proof or just offer a few £K over the odds for her to bring it over...but def. not worth it as theres clearly a lot of holes in the story ( including issues with other bits of information like the phone no ect) and also the listing has been removed probably cos autotrader wised up to it.

cheers again really helps to get others opinions :)

[A.J]

after looking around a little iv found another ludicrous deal on a different car...at an even better discount than the one i was looking at!

link :o

and as it happens the contact number is only one digit out from the listing that i contacted (...number disconnected) and the mileage is practically the same!!

you would think autotrader would search out these scamers!

[Giblet]

i read in the newspaper a few months ago about scams like this. the prior posts all mention ways it could be scam and i recall the article did report similar instances. Stay well clear AJ. One golden rule, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't.

[Steve ( West Mids )]

New link doesn't work 4 me.

[maneesh]

any car that is offered at a price far lower than book should be viewed with caution, whether the car is overseas or round the corner.

[A.J]

New link doesn't work 4 me.

...had a feeling the link would be down quickly - must be autotrader deleting it - at least theyre preventing too many people being exposed to the scam! im sure there are other ones to be found.... the link above was an '06 RS4 going for £12k!!