Recently I changed to a new laptop and put up the old one for sale on-line. I listed it on a couple of popular sites Quikr (http://bangalore.quikr.com/) and Olx (http://www.olx.in/). Within a day I had a two responses, one from a doctor and another someone with a random id.
Well the doctor, having a proper south Indian name and Gmail id with a family picture to go with his profile, claimed he was in Scotland and wanted more details on the laptop, which I replied and sent. The next day I got reply stating that the doctor wanted me to ship the laptop to his son in Nigeria!
A quick search on Google reveals that this is an another popular Nigerian scam. The buyer asks you accept payment via Paypal and dispatch the item using DHL to an address in Nigeria, making a story like although he himself is in Scotland/UK, his son is in Nigeria and its a gift for him. On agreement you get a mail, fake of course, from Paypal that the payment has been made and you have to provide a DHL tracking id for Paypal to release funds to your account. You can guess the rest, you send the laptop and never hear of it again or the money.
Similar story with the random id guy.
A few of points to keep in mind when selling on-line, and I got lucky here:
Well the doctor, having a proper south Indian name and Gmail id with a family picture to go with his profile, claimed he was in Scotland and wanted more details on the laptop, which I replied and sent. The next day I got reply stating that the doctor wanted me to ship the laptop to his son in Nigeria!
A quick search on Google reveals that this is an another popular Nigerian scam. The buyer asks you accept payment via Paypal and dispatch the item using DHL to an address in Nigeria, making a story like although he himself is in Scotland/UK, his son is in Nigeria and its a gift for him. On agreement you get a mail, fake of course, from Paypal that the payment has been made and you have to provide a DHL tracking id for Paypal to release funds to your account. You can guess the rest, you send the laptop and never hear of it again or the money.
Similar story with the random id guy.
A few of points to keep in mind when selling on-line, and I got lucky here:
- Create a a new random email id to list the item
- Do not put your mobile/name on the listing. Add mobile only if required for listing
- When responding to buyers, again do not give out your mobile/name at first. Have them send their mobile number and you call them
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