I thought long and hard about writing this post, because I feel like an utter idiot - it's embarrassing, and I feel really, really sick that it happened. I actually worry that you'll think I'm a loser, or a total f**kwit for being conned - because I've never fallen for any scam before, and I'm super savvy with these kind of things. But, if I don't write, the scammer wins. If I can stop someone else being Gumtree scammed, then overcoming my shame and embarrassment is worth it, right? Gah. Imagine how people feel when they lose their entire life savings?
So, here goes. This morning I was scammed on Gumtree. The amount doesn't matter, and I can afford to lose it, I suppose, and when all's said and done, it's only money, right? Right?
Luckily, I saw it for a scam before he robbed any more from us.
The thing is, all my instincts were saying 'it's a scam' and I did flag it for one. Somehow, my self doubt got the better of me, and in the rush of this morning, I let my husband win out against my better judgement.
I can see why he got scammed. He's been desperate to find new old Defender doors for weeks now, because the ones we have are a bit rusty and hella hard to fix. But to buy them from a scrapyard here? We've been quoted 6K bucks. That's a LOT Of money. A depressing amount of money. It seemed to us that second hand doors shouldn't cost that much, and surely someone had them lying around, being useless, and would part with them for much less than that? That's how it works, most of the time, with car parts. Big companies rip you off, backyard mechanics and salt of the earth types let you have things for what they're actually worth.
So when a guy responded to our 'wanted to buy' ad, our plan seemed to have worked. There is a lot of nice people in the world, after all.
We sent him the money, he was going to send it via TNT. He even sent us his licence. Gave us his bank account details. It really did seem legit.
There were something really bugging me though - I wanted to send the money via Paypal, and the price seemed a bit too good to be true. But I was in the shower, and Jamie was calling through the screendoor at me, and he was on the phone to the guy and in a hurry, and -
- we parted with our money.
Next thing, an hour later, he's ringing the hubs at work, asking for more freight, as he misestimated it, and saying he accidentally bounced the money back at us, so could we send more through, so he could pay the freight guy, and the transaction should be back in our account this afternoon?
No. Fucking. Way.
I may be an idiot for parting with the funds in the first place, but there was no way I was falling for it twice. I said 'sure, as soon as I get the money back, we can sort something out then'. Turns out, you can't scam a scammer - damn. I got quite a few more texts then, saying he wasn't a scammer, and then we couldn't prove it, and then that the doors had been posted and should arrive, and so on and so forth - a lot of rubbish that made no sense.
Goodbye cash.
This gif - literally me.
I called the bank and they did a recall and trace, but because the amount was under 500, it becomes a civil matter - that means it has to be an agreement between us and them. Of course, he was never going to agree to send it back - and I was never going to bother with civil action, because it's not really worth the time and stress. I rang his bank, who kindly put a note on his file 'in case anyone else reports him, but at this stage it's a he said she said'. Oh I know, I said. But still - just in case anyone else files a complaint, you'll be warned. I also filed a report with Scamwatch, which sends the report to Gumtree. Then, I got a message from someone on Gumtree. 'You didn't send money to William Wilson, did you?' came the message. Damn. Turns out he is a known scammer. He has been reported a number of times. Have the police done anything about it? Well, since he has my 'less than 500 bucks', that'll be a no, right?
So, how not to get scammed on Gumtree, a summary?
- Only send money via Paypal, because it's insured
- Always use the Gumtree messaging service, not emails or anything else
- Ask for photos or buy in person
- If it sounds too good to be true, it absolutely-fucking-is.
And I knew this all before today, and I still got scammed. Me, who's pretty streetwise. Ugh.
Whilst I"m sure he's going to continue and none of my reports will come to any end, I do hope I annoyed him slightly today by reporting him to all the channels I knew. It'll make it harder for him one day.
I'm trying my best to give him credit - whatever he's done, he's really, really good at it. Scammers be scammers for a reason - if you're no good at the blag, you're hardly going to take it up as your day job. Well done, Mr William Wilson, whoever you are. Well played. If you had any other way to earn a living,
I'm sure you would. Wait - no you wouldn't, you're a dishonest lazy prick and I hope a whole pallet of Defender doors lands on your head.
Look at me trying to be zen and failing.
But at least you get to learn from our mistake, right? There's a silver lining to every problem - so long as it's under 500 bucks.
Now, we have sworn never to talk about this again, and the hubs is going to try fixing those doors so it'll feel like we saved over 5,500 bucks, not lost a little less than 500.
And if you can upvote the hell out of this post, maybe we'll at least make up for the day's losses.
Sob.