Classified "theft" - should I be concerned?

[CAPP0]

I have a bike for sale at the moment, advertised in a few places including eBay and (on the recommendation of the BB crew here) Gumtree.

Had a message last night from an eBayer asking me if the bike was "cloned". (It's not, it's completely genuine, I've had it over three years, have a bill of sale, V5 reg to me, HPI clear, etc etc). When I asked what he meant, he said that he had replied to an ad on Gumtree recently with the same picture, only to receive a message from Gumtree saying that the seller had been reported for suspicious behaviour and the ad removed.

I haven't had anything from Gumtree myself, and neither my ad nor anything cloning mine are up today.

Ignore and forget, or is there anything I need to attend to?

[zcacogp]

CAPP0 said:

Ignore and forget, or is there anything I need to attend to?

I'd be doing this. It sounds like someone on Gumtree has nicked your pictures for their own use, nothing more.

The number of times I hear 'Gumtree' mentioned in connection with iffy behaviour makes me slightly despair of the site.


Oli.

[V8forweekends]

Dunno about Gumtree - when people used to do this by stealing photos linked to (say) a sellers photobucket site, the sellers sometimes replaced the picture linked to with a totally unrelated (and occasionally offensive) one. :-)

[CAPP0]

zcacogp said:

I'd be doing this. It sounds like someone on Gumtree has nicked your pictures for their own use, nothing more.

The number of times I hear 'Gumtree' mentioned in connection with iffy behaviour makes me slightly despair of the site.


Oli.

Thanks - that was my inclination. I agree, I must admit that I tend to consider Gumtree a place to sell your knackered 1990s Corsa for £250 rather than for decent-quality items, but I was persuaded otherwise!

[ging84]

it does happen, people take photos of things from the internet which they don't have and advertise them for sale

if the photo you used was one you had previous published on the internet it's possible that happened

but it's just as likely some well meaning internet idiot has seen a picture of a bike that's the same as yours in a similar setting and has decided that's definitely the exact same photo

[redback911]

Upload your image to Google image search:

http://www.wikihow.com/Search-by-Image-on-Google

You might be able to see who/when used the same image.

[Jakg]

I've seen this happen before - the "2012 5-series for £2,500, NO PHONE CALLS EMAIL ON [e-mail]".

They've got a bit lazy and now find a car legitimately for sale, and then copy all the pictures with a very low price. After a while the ad gets pulled - but presumably not before they've tried to get buyer(s) to release the funds to their "shipping agent".

[CAPP0]

redback911 said:

Upload your image to Google image search:

http://www.wikihow.com/Search-by-Image-on-Google

You might be able to see who/when used the same image.

Interesting - the whole ad does seem to have been syndicated out to a few other sites. They link back to either of the original ads, but you can't see the contact details of the advertiser due to the "safety" feature.

[CAPP0]

Well, here's interesting.

I got on to Gumtree to check what was going on. Apparently, when I listed the ad, I put my phone number in with a space between the area code and the actual number. Gumtree then only "recognise" me by my area code (which incidentally covers a massive area) and therefore, as they have had scam issues with people listing that area code, I automatically got lumped into the same boat and hence people responding to my advert get a "scam warning" email.

Strange, and daft, but true apparently. Would be helpful if Gumtree did not accept a number entered with a space - simple solution!