It happened to me....

Hi there,

Just wanted to share with you all a recent event that happened to me. Protect yourselves against these people.

I live and work in Palau, recently moved over from Yap. Having filmed predominantly with a PAL standard VX1000 for many years I am now looking for a VX1000 NTSC model. Having visited many sites that had camera user forums I found a guy in Canada proporting to have the camera I needed in 'mint condition - hardly used and ready to go'. I wanted this specific camera because I have a VX1000 dedicated housing from SEALUX.

Firstly the seller would not give out the banking info required by my bank to effect a standard money transfer. He reckoned that giving out that information was against his bank policy (Warning #1). So we decided to go with a MoneyGram, pretty similar to a western union transaction.

So I prepared the paperwork and found an outlet in his town where he could cash said MoneyGram. He stood by his guns the day of the transfer and said he never received the money. According to MoneyGram the transfer was collected that very same day. Now the person cashing the transfer had to have photo ID of the person designated as the recipient. They also had to have the reference number known only to me, the recipient, MoneyGram and of course my Bank. There is also a test question the answer to which would only be known to those same 4 entities.

My current situation is that I'm out a considerable amount of money. There has been zero mails from the intended recipient and the MoneyGram people won't issue a report on the issuing office of the transfer unless requested by a police subpoena.

This will take some time to try sorting out especially from Palau.

LESSON: Buy gear from reputable outlets or direct from the manufacturer! Even if that can be a bit more expensive the bitter pill of being victim to an event like this is indeed a very difficult one to swallow!

Best Fishes,

Mark.

Yikes. I'm very sorry to read about your problem. This sort of thing has always been my greatest fear in purchasing anything valuable over the internet or by email. I hope you are eventually able to resolve this. In any case, thanks for letting all of us know about this terrible experience.

Frogfish

Fraud is rampant on the 'net, including EBay. I got ripped off this year (along with many others) by a guy that purported to be selling high end cameras, both film and digital. It took a long time to sort out, (from Feb. to Oct.), but the only reason that I am not out some of the money is that I paid for it with my credit card. Most credit card companies have a zero liability policy for internet fraud, as they want you to feel confident to shop online (and hopefully rack up interest). Do not think that EBay or Paypal will cover all of your loss if defrauded. They will only cover a portion, which on a high ticket item is minimal. EBay will only cover a small amount after you have exhausted all other options. In my case, it would have been $175 on a $700 purchase. Do not wire money, ever.

So, if it looks too good to be true, it's probably fraud. Don't buy three day items, check what was being sold in the feedback. These guys build up a reputation selling samll ticket items, then switch to fake listings. Use your credit card to protect yourself.

Needless to say, I haven't been EBaying for a while!

Marli

Well it took a while but I got my money returned to me. Here's why. I was dealing with MoneyGram. They, and others like them Western Union etc, have a policy to track any persons selling over the internet. I had written on the documentation that the wire was to make an internet purchase. They then cross referenced the guy I was intending to buy the camera from and then found that complaints had been levied against him on previous eBay issues and he was in fact on a 'blacklist' developed by these international money wiring agencies.

They basically blocked any payments to him. This although is a happy ending there are far too many stories out there of people getting ripped off for much greater sums of money.

In my instance - lesson learned.

Best fishes,

Mark.