Received a scam warning from PH this morning.

[TonyRPH]

I currently have a car for sale here in the classifieds.

I received a scam warning from PH this morning - I'm impressed! (seriously)

Yesterday, I received what I thought looked to be a bogus enquiry about it. (reproduced below)

After the second email, my suspicions were confirmed, hence the final response.

I have heard nothing more from this person.

First email:

http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/xxxxxxxx

Hello, I read the announcement and I am very interested in the car I wonder if
she is still available if so contact me.

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My response:

Hi,

If you let me have your telephone number I can give you a call.

Thanks,
Tony.

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Next email from this person:

hello
I have a new picture and the final price of the car please

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My next response:

Hi,

The pictures in the advert are current pictures.

The price is as per the advert.

But I suspect the next thing you are going to say is that you want to pay with a bank draft,
and want me to ship the car to Nigeria.

I don't need to tell you what the answers to those questions are going to be..

Thanks.

Edited by TonyRPH on Thursday 22 July 12:21

[dylan0451]

bosch, 'no nonsense'

can't they (PH) just get a credit card check or some test that nigerians have to go through before they're allowed to contact sellers?!

i realise that comes across a tad racist, none meant, but when i'm on the lookout for a sub £300k car, i tend to look in the same country

[Chimune]

I agree - i had a similar email within 30 mins of my ad going up. Wasnt going to reply, but was impressed to see a PH email this morning saying its probably a scam and to ignore it.

Well done PH !!

[RacingPete]

dylan0451 said:

bosch, 'no nonsense'

can't they (PH) just get a credit card check or some test that nigerians have to go through before they're allowed to contact sellers?!

i realise that comes across a tad racist, none meant, but when i'm on the lookout for a sub £300k car, i tend to look in the same country

I understand the sentiment to want some form of blocking mechanism to stop these unsolicited emails but in practice it would be very impractical (costs of checking credit cards, blocking genuine attempts to contact seller etc)

We do though have some procedures in place to help a seller, and to stop them falling for any scam out there:

• We will alert on the email if we think the email originates from a foreign country
• We constantly update the fraud warning pages on latest scams we know about
• If we find an email user is bogus we will send all email recipients of their emails a warning message.

But as always we rely on the vigilance of sellers to inform us of any bogus emails, and to be aware of the issues when advertising online.