Be careful - we found a scam and want to get the word out - RV-Dreams Community Forum

rwarner22 · RV-Dreams Family Member

Be careful - we found a scam and want to get the word out

annette · RV-Dreams Family Member

YEs typical scam. Happened to us but the buyer was from Canada . Sounded odd and this was like 5 years ago. So hubby said no thanks. We kept getting them from the newspaper we placed the add. Hubby had put an email instead of phone number.

We thought it was odd this person could not buy an RV in Canada? OUrs was he had a deposit made out to a dealer fell thru the deal. So he would send us the check we sign it and then he will send for the RV and we keep the difference.

if you google.com this type of scam you will see it for cars, houses, anything of value.

Always better to be safe if it seems odd

galeanna · RV-Dreams Family Member

It sounds like the one that we were going to look at in Georgia ... he want the $3000 downpayment thru .. sr moment here can't remember the co name but it was like a money order in Gale's name from me only we put it in my name from Gale....then he wanted to talk man to man with Gale only. At that I kind of let him have it and wanted more info about him....rank etc. Not surprising he never got back to us. This guy claimed he was in the service and the coach had been his dad's who had passed away and he just wanted to get rid of it....we even looked at pictures of it online.

rwarner22 · RV-Dreams Family Member

Sounds like the same guy. What a low life.

galeanna · RV-Dreams Family Member

Yes it does and it sounds like he is jumping from site to site.

Tom Donaldson · RV-Dreams Community Member

I am selling a RV, and MOST of the contacts I have gotten are from scammers doing exactly what rvclassified.com warns about on this page. I get almost identically worded emails from different email addresses, identical down to misspellings.

There are folks out there making a career of such scams. I started doing online checks of even the legitimate sounding contacts. It costs a little, but could save a lot. I have used a couple companies, but liked Intelius the best.

If you've got an extra $50 to spare, it can be interesting to do a background check on yourself! You will find that anyone can get a LOT of information about you, but a lot of the info will be for someone else with the same name (there seem to be a lot of Tom Donaldson's in the USA).

Good luck,

Tom

Tim & Robyn · RV-Dreams Family Member

You know, even attempted fraud is a crime. I know we have some former law enforcement folks in this forum. It sure would be nice to get some advice as to how to nail this weasel, and others like him. I'm not at all an advocate of vigilante justice, but sooner or later somebody is going to get ripped off by this guy. If there's anything we can do to prevent that it seems to me it would be preferable to waiting for someone to be victimized. Anyone want to wear a wire?

RVDude · RV-Dreams Family Member

One way to protect yourself (either buyer or seller) is to use an intermediary, like www.escrow.com. They collect the docs on both sides and wait for everything to clear before they release anything. They are an eBay recommended site and are the only one I will use when I sell my rig.