A heads up about some punter that is clearly dodgey.

I'm selling a surfboard and have it advertised here and on GumTree. I will point out that this person responded through the GumTree ad and NOT the Seabreeze ad but I figured this is a good medium to let people know.

The short version is I got a text message first with a request to converse via email. Stated he would pay via PayPal (all sounded good) and requested an invoice. Then advises he would put extra in to pay for shipping but would require my assistance to pay the shipping agent with those funds via Western Union.

I called him out on it telling him there was no reason he couldn't pay them himself, cancelled the invoice and surprise haven't heard back from him. Initially was receiving responses about 2 seconds after hitting send on my email.

Anyway, if you get a text from +31476699783 or an email from [email protected] I suggest you proceed with caution.

P.S. I know the mobile is clearly international, he claimed he was just O/S at the moment and would be back soon.

This is a common scam through gumtree, carsales or any website like that. That's why they text you and ask you to email them back, so the sites don't flag the email as spam

I get between 3-4 of these texts per add I put on gumtree. Just ignore them

Thanks for the heads up - clearly enough people get suckered into these things to make it worth their while -if something appears too good to be true there is a good chance that its not! Hope u get a sale though to a legit person asap!

Western Union
Pay extra for transport and
over seas at present
Plus generally poor grammer

They even go as far as sending you a dodgy paypay reciept to show you they have put the money into your account. My wife thought it was real. I told her to go into her account a look (not just trust the link provided by scammer). Surprise surprise no money.

We told paypal and they sent out the hit men (don't mess with paypal)

"is the item still for sale"