Had an interesting experience today as I have listed an item for sale on Olx.in. This is what happened and I'm narrating it since many of us use it to buy or sell pre-owned items in India.
At this point I already told him that I prefer his friend comes over checks the item, make payment and take it. He assures me the items from the pics looked great (which they are actually) and he'll make the payment now as he want's me to hold it for him.
It was a clear case of fraud as you can tell. He was asking me to accept his payment request while if he was a real buyer, he would have simply made the payment to my account as he has my UPI id. Nothing else was needed. Many gullible people in their rush to receive payments actually end up making the payments themselves and get scammed out of their money.
I don't generally accept calls from unknown numbers but OLX buyers never have the courtesy or decency to text and then initiate a call after receiving a response. Even if you request them over DM to do this they still call you at odd hours and that's why I picked up knowing it's futile to tell people over marketplace like OLX and I also wanted to sell my items quickly.
He called again but I didn't answer and simply asked him to text me. There was no text (not that I was expecting a real response back). I also reported his account for fraud to OLX.in and left it at that. Because there's not a lot more I can do in this case.
A real buyer would've called me himself, setup a time and place for meeting, checked the items, paid for it, collected it and left. If it were online, speak over the phone, agree to price and terms of delivery, make payment and then accept delivery.
If I get a call again tomorrow I'm just going hurl a ton of abuses now or simply have some fun.
But moral of the story is, don't be in a rush when selling something online on any marketplace website. Take time to consider the offer you are getting. There is no dearth of scammers, time wasters, low ballers online, not just on OLX.
Few things to consider / potential red flags:
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