I Need Advice Quick

[rosiew]

I put my car on Autotrader to sell. I received an email from someone interested and wanted to know about the car this was fine, he said he wanted it for his in-laws. The strange thing is that i have just received an email back saying that he wants the car and asked for the name to be put on the cheque and address to send it to. When the cheque clears i have to contact him so he can get a "shipper" to come and collect the car. He is sending the cheque out to me today. It all seems a bit too good to be true. Should i have any reason to be worried after all, if the cheque clears he has paid for the car. Please give me some advise. Also this person is foreign so is it because thats how they do business in their country(although im only summising he is foreign because his surname is swaltz

[pretty_snowdrop]

Be very careful about cheques clearing. Cheques can be returned unpaid at ANY time.

[Orderlimit]

Off topic but

"No one could scam me, anybody stupid enough to fall for these advance fee scams deserves to be ripped off"

I once attended a fraud course run by police for new officers. Before the lesson started an old lady came into the room and stated she was running a course in the same building training new civilian front-counter staff about receiving lost and stolen property. She asked if any of the officers could lend her their wallet to use for the practical lessons and know-it-all, Officer X, kindly handed his over.

Soon after, the trainers arrived and apologised for the delay. During the subject of advance fee scams, officer X stated "No one could scam me, anybody stupid enough to fall for these advance fee scams deserves to be ripped off".

At the end of the course, Officer X, asked the trainer where he could find the lady who was training the new front-counter staff only to be told no such staff were trained at the location and was soon informed he had actually given his property to the cleaning supervisor.

[EDDIE51]

It will be a foreign check they can take months to clear and even then they can be returned unpaid. I had this for an item I advertised in the paper.
If you do it insist on cash by bank transfer and do not let the car go until it is in the bank and clear. If you go through with this cheque it will show as clear but days or weeks later the payment will be reversed and you will lose everything. DO NOT DO IT !

[Hypognosis]

Is it permitted to specify in your advert something like "sale to UK addresses only"?

Also, if things reach the stage where you've received a cheque, is it possible to ring your bank, tell them the sending account number and get them to establish that it is not a "fraudulent account", in advance. Doesn't matter if it takes days because you can then tell the buyer that "getting the cheque cleared will occur as soon as the account is verified as valid". If they are genuine, they will be peeved but won't mind the extra wait. If they're fraudsters, they'll know what the outcome is going to be.

[rosiew]

Thanks to all that replied. I have had another 2 emails from foreign names both offering me payment without looking at the car so YES it is a scam. I emailed the 1st one back and told him i only wanted the payment for the car and nothing else and the shipping is up to him....... Iv heard nothing since. Why do these A*******S do this. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

[Orderlimit]

They are into everything rosiew. Please please ignore any further offers you may receive from these lot who will now try and come to some arrangement about the shipping. Loads of people fall for it even after they become suspicious.

[retrocop]

This is a scam that has been going for some time now.It was tried on me.AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE.It was documented in the Daily Mail about 6 years ago just after it was tried on me.They seem to favour North European or Scandinavian surnames and claim to be merchant seamen who need shippers as they spend long periods at sea.I believe they are our famous old scam artists who hail from Nigeria.

[TWR]

Scam, do not touch it, It's well know scam you will end up with no money+no car.

[EDDIE51]

They do it because perhaps 1 in 1000 emails gets a 'result', it costs nothing to send the emails and makes them £1,000s a week.
They churn out emails by the thousand every day using a computer program to generate them.