If you place an advertisement online, there are a number of potential problems which you should be aware of. This article discusses the most common ones and simple methods to avoid them.
1) Non-Payment
Perhaps the most common issue is buyers not paying. Before sending any product, ensure that you've received full payment, the that the payment has cleared, and that it has been deposited in your account. This should be done for any payment type, including credit cards and cheques.
A similar issue is 'buyers' denying that they received goods and refusing to pay. Few of these claims are true, but unless one uses registered mail this is hard to prove. Although registered mail costs more, it does increase the probability of you being paid (or not having to give a refund).
2) E-Mail Theft
To place your online advertisement, you will need to provide a contact EMAIL address. Unfortunately, there are various software programmes which collect EMAIL addresses from websites. They may get this direct from your advertisement, or breach the website security and steal it direct from the website databases. Alternatively, some programmes randomly complete the advertisement contact forms and send off messages, so that when you reply your EMAIL address can be collected from your reply.
Your EMAIL address will then be used for SPAM, fraud, or both. To prevent this, do not use your personal or business EMAIL address. Instead, get an address from one of the free EMAIL services and use this for the advertisement. When you no longer need the EMAIL, just delete it.
3) The Over-payment Refund Scam
A 'buyer' will overpay you for an item and then ask you to refund the overpayment. For example, if an item costs $100 he might send $200, and then claim that he overpaid by mistake, requesting you to send him the extra $100 back.
In this scam, the original payment is fraudulent (e.g. counterfeit cheque or stolen credit card). The 'buyer' will simply disappear with any refund and since the payment to you will not clear, you will be out of pocket the amount of the refund. To prevent this, instead of refunding, cancel the original payment and request a new payment. Never ship goods or provide refunds before payments have fully cleared and been deposited in your account.
4) Private Meeting
This normally happens only on expensive items, such as real estate sales. The 'buyer' requires a meeting to finalize the deal, in a private setting (e.g. a hotel room) in a distant city. Depending on the exact scam, various things can happen if you go, such as your house being robbed while you are away or people trying to force money out of you when you're are alone in private or an attempt to buy the item in cash (with counterfeit money).
In general, such meetings are unrealistic and one should immediately break off contact with the people. Nobody agrees to buy a property before ever seeing it and then insists on a private meeting in a distant city. However, if you do decide to go, do not go alone and insist on the meeting being in a public place such as a restaurant.
5) Theft of Identity Information
There are a number of scams which are designed to get your financial details. For example, a bank account number or credit card number, along with sufficient personal information to give them access to the bank account or credit card.
Many financial institutions have a small number of personal questions which they use to identify people. Typical questions include your date of birth, your full name (including middle names), your mother's maiden name and so on. Consequently, if someone obtains this type of information from you, along with a bank account number or credit card number, they may be able to contact your bank or credit card company (by phone or through an online account) and pose as yourself.
They are a number of reasons which a 'buyer' may give for asking for this information. For example, they may ask your bank details so that they can transfer money to your account and then say they need the personal information for administrative or security reasons.
It is best not to provide either financial information or personal information to strangers. Instead, use a payment method (e.g. cheque or credit card) which does not require that you provide this information.
Doug Stewart develops and owns various advertising portals, with his latest project being
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