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Important warning - gumtree and Shpock


ianmacc
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All. A few days ago there was a seller from Peterlee in NE England on gumtree selling a large collection of Hornby locomotives at an implausible price to the point where I questioned whether it was each or a zero had been left off. Assured it was genuine he offered to post for an additional £8 so I accepted and paid. Then I got an email from gumtree security saying they had received reports that the listing was a scam and was taking payment from multiple users with no intention of sending the non-existent goods! I managed to block the payment today. Lo and behold the same listing turned up today on Shpock this time in nearby Dunstan. A quick warning to the people who’d made an offer and the listing disappeared. If you see a similar offer that looks too good to be true it probably isn’t. 

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Thanks for the warning but I also think this underlines - again - that offers that are so ridiculously attractive should attract extreme caution/cynicism:

 

1) The listing is fake to defraud a buyer (as would appear to have been the case here)

2) The stuff is stolen

3) It's been listed by a little old lady with absolutely no idea of its value, in which case Karma would be served by pointing this out

 

Has that lot been priced at £150 it would be an extreme bargain. At £35 it's just looking for suckers.... 

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Got to agree,  you can get a good bargain on Gumtree but NEVER take at face value whats posted or shown in the pictures, ALWAYS face to face and inspect before handing over cash. Yes there ARE quite a lot of genuine, honest (sometimes clueless) sellers out there, but also quite a lot of scumbag chancers as well.   Went to view a  ' Hornsby loco, BNIB' not long ago, yes it was a Horn(s)by  BNIB. . . once ? When first sold ? But had obviously since been in several crashes, jumped on, thrown off a roof, fed to the dog and been re painted by a blind man wearing mittens.

  When I asked the seller about the BNIB ln the listing he said " No idea what it means I just copied it from another listing !   No I didn't buy it :laugh_mini:

 

Yes you can buy sight unseen and send them the money, alternatively just roll up your tenner and set it alight, at least you will feel a warm glow for a few seconds , and get the same feeling of burned fingers :good_mini:

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I didn't know what BNIB stood for, so had to look it up:

 

Of the various suggestions offered up by our favourite search engine, it would appear to mean 'Brand new in Box'.

But other suggestions were:

  • Buy Now It's Brill
  • Bid Now, I'm Broke
  • Buyer Need Instant Ban

or as in this case.

  • Brand New, In Bits.

 

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One old lady listed a lot of trains for £2 I kid you not. Not surprisingly she was inundated with zero karma buyers. I pointed out that she was unaware what she had and offered her a much better prIce of £40 like the post above. Still a real bargain but both happy. I’ve only had one bad experience with gumtree and that was the scam above. 

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6 minutes ago, Robin Verth said:

For some reason I have never trusted Gumtree so I never look or use it.

I have bought several things off Gumtree, including a car, and have never had a problem, all have been face to face meetings with nice people.

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Buyers are

On 16/10/2019 at 11:32, Mattc6911 said:

Got to agree,  you can get a good bargain on Gumtree but NEVER take at face value whats posted or shown in the pictures, ALWAYS face to face and inspect before handing over cash. Yes there ARE quite a lot of genuine, honest (sometimes clueless) sellers out there, but also quite a lot of scumbag chancers as well. 

 

There's quite a lot of "scumbag" buyers too. Only had one genuine person turned up to buy and a dozen "yeah I'll have it" and never responding to texts or turning up.

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13 minutes ago, 57xx said:

Buyers are

 

There's quite a lot of "scumbag" buyers too. Only had one genuine person turned up to buy and a dozen "yeah I'll have it" and never responding to texts or turning up.

 

 

You would hope 'karma' would put scumbag buyers and sellers together :smile_mini2:,  Sadly not though

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That seller on Gumtree tried getting me as well, messaged him for a while and he came across as quite genuine. Said he would take paypal but as soon as I said goods and services he rambled on about how I couldn't use it because he had reached the limit on his account, after that I didn't bother. It's a shame that people are so dishonest, thought the deal was a little too good to be true. 

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As regards sham buyers,  some years ago I was standing in a local model railway store,  well known downunder and overheard a conversation.  A person had seen an advertisement listing a deceased estate containing model railway items for sale.  The buyer contacted the bereaving widow and made arrangements to inspect the estate.  Upon arrival it soon became apparent that the deceased collected expensive brass locomotives.  The widow admitted that she had no idea of the value and asked the buyer for an honest appraisal.  To his credit he did pay $950.00 for the over thirty brass locomotives but given that each loco was worth at least $500.00 conservatively,  he did rip her off.  To my surprise those of his immediate audience congratulated him on his "good luck" in finding a bargain.

 

A friend of mine two years ago answered a local Gumtree advertisement listing the remains of what was once a vast digital Marklin loft layout.  The new owner of the home was renovating and wanted the layout gone.  My friend who is an astute bargainer talked down the owner's delegate to the lowly sum of $600.00 Aud  with the proviso that what he did not take the builder doing the renovations would dump the rest.  Included amongst the purchases was over $30,000.00 in Marklin digital equipment including over twenty new unopened complete kits to convert non-DCC Marklin locomotives to DCC,   digital controllers, amplifier/boosters,  track decoders, vast quantities of Marklin track plus numerous pieces of antique Marklin buildings which mostly received high prices when sold on that auction site,  The "piece de resistance" though was a rusting largescale station building sitting under the layout obviously neglected.  He showed me the building, I did a little Googling and suggested he may have a rare pre-WW1 piece of Marklin memorabilia.  After joining several U.S. based Marklin forums he soon found an eager buyer for the station building and as he was travelling to the States offered to take it with him.  He received $15,000.00 USD for the station and even charged the buyer hundreds of dollars in shipping costs even though he took the item as personal luggage.   Once restored the building would be worth around $40,000.00 USD.

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