28/12/09 - I Just Want To Sell My Car, But…
So I’m trying to sell my car on carsales.com.au, where you can be contacted by potential buyers, in which case I was. On Christmas day there was some interest from ‘David’, a ‘marine engineer’ who wanted to purchase my Honda Accord for his father as a surprise Christmas gift. Hell yeah!!!
Since David’s occupation requires him to be out at sea for months at a time, he would need his ‘pick up agent’ to collect the car and take it to its desired destination. This service apparently costs $1000, but I couldn’t care less because it wasn’t coming out of my pocket, or so I thought. You see, the agent needed the grand up front, and there are obviously no Western Union branches at sea, so we organised for me to receive payment through Pay Pal for both my car and his agent.
The next day I get an email from Pay Pal stating that they are holding on to (x) amount, accompanied with instructions to deposit $1000 at a Western Union. The money would be inaccessible until I email Pay Pal the transfer receipt, and only then would I receive the mullah for the Honda plus the reimbursed thousand dollars I would’ve paid this agent. At this point I’m still being played like a straight flush, but being Boxing Day AND also a Saturday, there was no chance of me getting to a post office (as you can make Western Union transfers there too) to make the drop. Now, here’s where it gets interesting… I eagerly proceed to attempt to deposit through WU’s online option. The problem is there is a $999.99 limit for online transfers, and anything over has to be made at a branch. This was not going to happen for another two days so I informed David of the situation and asked if it would be ok to make a transfer one cent short of what was requested, he said it was fine. HOLD THE FCUK ON?!?! If it’s ok to make an online payment of $999.99, and David and I have been keeping correspondence through email while he’s been on a ship, why doesn’t he make this Western Union payment himself?
I get on the Pay Pal website to question the transaction ID issued from their initial email. And while I was on that email I noted that in the ‘FROM’ field it said ‘service@paypal.com.au(pp1468@officeemail.net)’. Yo! What the eff?! I also question whether this was an official email used by their company.
It turns out that it was all a spoof, a hoax, a scam, a jack, a con, a rip-off, and a cheat. It doesn’t matter what you call it – mum didn’t raise no sucker! Nice try.
