Dealer’s Diary
Spotting scams
► Sadly, it seems that the number of scam ‘vehicle for sale’ listings on online sales sites such as eBay is showing no signs of going down — if anything, it’s the reverse! Scrolling through the car listings on eBay, one sometimes comes across cars that have been bid up to clearly ridiculous amounts; I’m currently looking at a listing for, allegedly, a 9000-mile Rover 800 fastback which has been bid up to £60,000!
It’s a scam listing, of course, and the high price is down to anti-scam activists bidding the price up to put genuine would-be buyers off bidding and, thus, stop them from being conned.
In this case a genuine seller’s account has been hacked and contains hundreds of scam listings, all intended to persuade people to part with money upfront for cars which can’t be seen before payment because they don’t exist. Photos are taken from other, genuine listings — the 9000-mile Rover was actually sold by a specialist in ultra-low mileage vehicles about three years ago.
Most, but not all scams will also include a ‘photo’ of wording giving an attractive buy-now price and an alternative email address to use rather than communicating through eBay. By using a photo of writing rather than text, they avoid the offer and email address being picked-up by eBay’s automated anti-scam software, and the description will often either be very bland and, if a large number of items is listed, common to
