Buying a car on ebay during lock down?
- Thread starter Chris152
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Trainee neophyte
Established Member
A Greek friend of mine asked me to look into his buying a tractor that was for sale in the UK, which would be shipped to Greece. The idea was to pay 50% down and have the tractor shipped to Greece, inspect the vehicle on delivery, and return it free of charge within 7 days if it wasn't any good. Sound like a good deal?
As far as I could tell from a distance, there was no tractor, no shipping agent, no selling company (they made a big thing of having a Companies House registration, which led to a middle-eastern run accountancy office in Essex, where no one spoke sufficiently passable English to be of any help). The real tell initially is that the tractor was just too cheap - it would have been a bargain and snapped up in the UK, so why send all the way to Greece on spec? It was about €30,000 all in, so €15,000 would have been at risk
Is this car you are looking at a bit of a bargain? Too good to turn down? Do an image search, and see if anyone else is selling or has sold the identical photograph...because if so, there isn't actually a car to be had; you will be buying the photo.
As far as I could tell from a distance, there was no tractor, no shipping agent, no selling company (they made a big thing of having a Companies House registration, which led to a middle-eastern run accountancy office in Essex, where no one spoke sufficiently passable English to be of any help). The real tell initially is that the tractor was just too cheap - it would have been a bargain and snapped up in the UK, so why send all the way to Greece on spec? It was about €30,000 all in, so €15,000 would have been at risk
Is this car you are looking at a bit of a bargain? Too good to turn down? Do an image search, and see if anyone else is selling or has sold the identical photograph...because if so, there isn't actually a car to be had; you will be buying the photo.
Trevanion
Greatest Of All Time
In a similar vein to what TN said, something you see very often on eBay particularly with Felder woodworking machines is that you'll find some that are priced ridiculously cheaply, usually listed somewhere really remote like the highlands and are willing to ship for £120 or something like that. If I recall the scam somehow stings you by not being able to refund the shipping money you sent across to them. As TN said, the pictures are usually of machines that have sold in the past and sometimes you'll see the exact same machine advertised at two polar opposites of the country.
There are plenty of genuine people out there, but you've got to be very careful as some scammers have gotten really bloody clever and just as convincing as a genuine seller.
There are plenty of genuine people out there, but you've got to be very careful as some scammers have gotten really bloody clever and just as convincing as a genuine seller.
