UKC

Have put my car up for sale on Autotrader (this is not a rant against Autotrader btw!)

Took three calls in a day, not from people that had any interest in the car, but from canvassers (wanting to send me some free motoring trade mags). Have developed an efficient and enjoyable way of dealing with them now though

Now I've got a couple of emails from someone expressing some interest in it, but the typos and the utter vagueness of the messages (he/she makes no reference in the main text to my actual car, price or location), make me suspect spam again.

Not a big deal, just curious to see whether others have had much weird spam. I'm guessing it starts, at their end, with an automatic program that just picks up new adverts and locates a phone number on there - the people ringing would only say "Can I speak to the person selling the [MY CAR TYPE, VAGUELY]" then they were asking for my name and email address, I told them to get from the ad that they are pretending to be responding to and the email person...oh what the hell I'll just paste the second mail (despite my suspicions, I replied to the first, just in case..):

"Ok great thats the type of car i have been looking to buy..Please i might not be able to come and view the car right now because i am presently too busy and out of town...But let me know your least selling price and i am sure am goin to make you a good deal for the car...Thanks and hope to hear from you soon"

Anyone think I might be shipping a car to Nigeria soon?

In reply to Kenny: a fellow colleague was involved in such a scam - but from Norway it would seem. Someone would collect the car for him. A cheque was sent for £1000 more than the car was worth.

Interestingly the cheque was appallingly forged. As my company makes bank notes and cheques - sending this to us was rather entertaining - also the police were quite interested.

For the naughty people that use this technique on Autotrader. When you see my email - check out my company before you send dodgy cheques to me!

In reply to Kenny:

Similar thing selling a clarinet on the web. Outnumbered legit enquiries at least 5:1.

In reply to Kenny:

I had this Kenny. They keep ringing you, constantly. After about 5 days of telling them where to stick stuff, my mum answered the phone and gave them all my details. I'm now inundated with junk.

In reply to Kenny: If you can be certain they are scamming you then send me their emails/phone numbers and I'll pass them on to some people who can be more annoing than you can possibly imagine.

In reply to Kenny:

you emailed me about that the other day, annoying aren't they. Have a look at http://www.carcrimeawareness.co.uk
Covers all the different cons in the car industry (you can read between the lines if you want to know what I really think its about). Nigerian scams are quite common, in our web metrics tool theres quite alot of users coming from nigeria. I like showing people that report
p

In reply to Kenny:

Trying to sell a car on eBay was much, much worse though.

In reply to Hotbad Peteel:

Yep, cheers for your replies. As I say, no gripe with Autotrader itself. I'm enjoying putting on a weird vocal cross between fake "eager-to-please", and theatrical ham (think Brian Blessed, though a bit less sonorous), asking "ARe you interested in buying my car", which they kind of ignore cos they need to move quickly onto "my name's Martin and I'm calling from blah blah Motoring blah blah" then I hang up on them. I never used to be able to just hang up on people, was always too polite. So this exercise is useful, in toughening me up

(Martin tried ringing back immediately, twice, I killed the calls then turned off the phone)

It's mildly satisfying, though i'd be more satisfied to just sell the car!

In reply to Kenny:

Don't answer the phone, leave it on answerphone and just listen for any people that may be interested.

My sisters answerphone says something like,
Sorry I cannot answer the phone ATM as I am cooking a meal,. Leave a message or if it is one of my relatives shout up as I may be listening.
that is realtime filtering.

In reply to Rid Skwerr:
You just need to give it the right sort of description! :

In reply to Kenny:


The fun never stops
This morning's pair...

No. 1 (from an Italian yahoo address):

How are you today? and how is work/business?
I believe you are fine. Just to let you know that I
am interested in buying your car. I have seen the details
and the price on the advert webpage. Pertaining to the
price, I will be paying you (£2,150). I want you to be aware
that I will be paying you with a cheque and the cheque will
also carry the shipping and clearing fund of the car at the
port and some other important things needed to be done
therein like the extra work needed to be done on the car
to make it perfectly ok and the documentation of
the shipping documents and the cost of every other things
which might come up as a result of purchase and for hazzle
free shippment..

Say I will be issuing out a cheque of total amount £5,500 and
I wouldn't mind waiting for the cheque to clear before any further step is taking. Pls, if you are interested and serious to sell? Pls e-mail me back giving me the address I will be sending the cheque to which
includes;

Full Name................
Address..................
Country..................
Postcode.................
Phone Number.............

Thanks as I wait for your reply.
Regards,
Mark

Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot_/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com

Aaaaand no. 2:

Dear sir,

My Name is Jason Potter.
I'm a citizen of United Kingdom, but I have all my
business with my family in United State of America.

I have the intention of purchasing your 1999
VOLKSWAGEN POLO 1.6 CL 4dr [75 Bhp] Saloon, £2150 for
sale. I'll pay you with a UK cheque, and wait for the
clearance before the pick up arrangement.

Concerning the shipping arrangement, my shipping
company will come for the pick up once the transaction
has been sealed.
If this is okay with you,do get back to me with your
LAST PRICE so that I can forward the payment to you.

Regards

In reply to Kenny: What's the mileage on your car? Is it diesel or petrol? How long on the MOT? Cheers.

got another cracker, not that entertaining though:

"Hello, Its nice to see the advert of your VOLKSWAGEN POLO on the site. I am interested in the purchase of the car and I would like you to send a mail to me urgently to know if the car is still available for sell, the present condition, pictures of the car and the last amount you are requesting for the car. I will be expecting your mail.
Cameron"

I presume the seven pictures of the car on the ad are not enough for him

In reply to Kenny:

Its good to know that they dont have the skills to trawl the site for adverts AND to put the sentence into the correct case.
p

In reply to Kenny:

I've had the same experience with email scams from non-english speakers!

I told the first few to get lost (not the exact words...) but now I'm having a whale of a time emailing them back.

I've currently sold my Isuzu trooper for £50k (its actually on the market for £3,250 if anyone is interested) to one guy, and I'm waiting to hear back from another guy who I offered it to for £102k as it is a limited edition with square wheels and MDF windows...and I dare say that he'll be sending me a bankers draft for £108k...

In reply to tommy hutton:

And another scam, some finance guy called saying he had 2 buyers lined up 'in my area' (aren't they all!) and all I had to do was give him a £99 refundable deposit to set up the finace for these buyers (go figure why I should pay for their finance!)

Anyway, he gave me a company number so I checked it out on the companies house website and he'd only been registered a few weeks...

Does anyone know who I can report these people to? I'm thinking that the police/fraud squad won't be interested as its such a small issue, but he's going to rip off someone gran soon..

In reply to tommy hutton:

send it to the customer care address at autotrader. Its at the bottom of the first screen in the selling area. You'll get 2 really stupid responses from the dimwits we employ before you get through to someone intelligent. Email me with the details once you get a response and i'll see if I can get it dealt with though.
p