Posted by Jim
Allright, I see alot of thread's lately asking if they have to trust a guy/website for buying mobile phones. Here is 10 tips you have to keep in mind before making a deal. Hope it will help some of you.
1| Make sure the website has a contact detail like phone number, street, country, ... a simple email adress is certainly not enough !
2| Go to whois.sc and type in the dodgy website, compare the informations with those on the website (contact details) but most important the creation date of the domain name, 90% of the time they where created less than a month ago. I wouldn't trust a wesbite that claims his adress is from Italy (example) while the domain name is registered in USA.
3| "google is your friend" - search the website on google, use "link:www.url.com" or "site:www.url.com". I wouldn't trust a website that has 0 references on Google.
4| Western Union payment only ? Forget it, 99% it's a scam.
5| Check if the website has an encrypted connection when you register or log in. Don't trust VeriSign logo's on website cause they link to an intern page instead of verisign.com (check the adress bar).
6| "Too good to be true" - If you are asking this to yourself then it is ! Don't believe that someone got hold of 10 mobile phones that still need to be launched on the market with a xxx$ price, that's less than 99$ per unit ... . Too good to be true.
7| They allways use the same emails or form of emails, they all come from Nigeria and they all ask that you urgently transfer the money (with Western Union) as others buyers are interested. Why don't thye sell to the best offer then ? You can find a typical email at the end of this post.
8| They also use some kind of Escrow Site, which might look proffesional (it's rare) so look out at the 7 points I made for such sites. Btw don't trust Escrow, use only secured way like paypal or banktransfer, although you can't have a 100% garantue to have your money back.
9| Don't be fooled by pics, they use non branded photos (or they cut the brand) from several months to give an impression that you never saw those pics on the web so they must be legit, which they aren't
10| If they reply on an email, check if it's done in a proffesional way.
| Quote: |
if you don't accept escrow, please don't reply so we can save the time. |
Very professional
If you still are unsure about a deal, ask it on the forum and we will gladly help you out
. Check this thread and this one for more information.
Now here is a typical scam email:
| Quote: |
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N.B: it's late, I didn't check for grammar and my keyboard work's 75% of the time, sorry for that
[ This Message was edited by: Jim on 2005-07-25 22:08 ]
Posted by max99
you only need one rule for trading
IF IN DOUBT BACK OUT
Posted by 50Cent
Nice thread there Jim
Lots of good info for new traders
Nice one
Rgds
50
Posted by amnesia
nice post there Jim, Could you post it in the Official Scammers thread. It's in this section as well.
It would be good for people to know
Posted by Jim
Thanks I hope it will help some. If you want you can copy and paste into the original scammer thread so it get's on top.