I always read, or watch stories on the TV, with disbelief that people are still getting scammed on eBay.

I’ve come to the conclusion that whatever it is the person concerned is buying is such a bargain that they take their brain out in the interest of securing this bargain.

There is a programme on TV at the moment called Hustle. One of their often repeated lines is “You cannot con an honest man”. Now, I am not suggesting that these people who are getting conned are criminals themselves but there is something in most of us that likes to get a bargain and there maybe an element of dishonesty in that.

In last weeks MCN was a guy who tried to buy a Bimota and got scammed and ended up losing all his money. He is a bit of a collector of rare machines and recognised that the £2500 asking price was an absolute bargain.

First mistake was when he contacted the guy and got the message ‘I’m working away at the moment etc…’ He admits himself he should have walked away at that point, but the £2500 Bimota kept him locked in and this is what the scammer relies on.

We went after a couple of motorbikes advertised in a magazine a couple of months ago, they were a bargain price, but when we got an email very similar to the one this chap described alarm bells rang and we didn’t pursue it. So it is not just eBay where these scammers hang out.

Then scam part two. The guy received what appeared to be official looking papers from eBay protecting him – clever – and thinking that he couldn’t lose his money sent a bank transfer.

Now aside from sending a bank transfer without seeing the motorbike, which is just plain stupid after thinking there might have been something dodgy with the email correspondence, you would check the validity of the paperwork with eBay wouldn’t you?

Anyhow as you might guess there is not a happy ending to this story, the money was transferred, the motorcycle never arrived and the chap’s bank traced the money transfer to Romania.

So, put your brains back in folks. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Don’t part with money until you’ve seen the motorbike. Arrange to pay cash when the motorbike is delivered. Do HP checks etc.

People are able to seize Ebay accounts without the owner of that account being aware of it mainly because the owner clicked on a link in a scam email from Ebay. Don’t do that either. If you think what the email says might be true there is an easy way to find out – log in to your account in the normal way, not via the link in the email.
Don’t make it so easy for these scammers, please.