Attention: Many many fake offers on German kleinanzeigen

[Hiwi]

Hi
there are currently many fake offers from cheaters on German kleinanzeigen portal.
I informed the German police. They told me that the cheaters are acting from Lithua and Coratia.
But the police can not do anything.

I like to warn everyone.
They copy images from ebay, etsy, ricardo. and so on. I don't know why they are cheating the pleasant HP collector. :-)

They take HP-97, HP-67, HP-41, HP peripherals like HP3468A/B

There is e.g. an offer for a W&W HP-41CY :

https://www.kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/h...4-168-1529

I attached a photo, i saw this photo on ebay some time ago. Does anyone remember the seller?

The background shows a notable pattern from an office chair, so it should be simple to identify.

When you ask them for more pictures you get pictures from the internet, i got one from ricardo. This is very easy to identify.

And if ask for more details you get KI modified pictures. I attach one from the original listing and the other that was sent later to me.

Ralf
this is from ebay:
   

this is a fake:
   

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello,

(11-07-2023 11:11 AM)Hiwi Wrote:  When you ask them for more pictures ...

On "Kleinanzeigen" the only way not to get cheated is to ask the seller, if personal collection of the item at his place is possible. With payment upon collection. Usually you either get no answer at all or some sort of excuse why only advance payment (outside the secure payment system of course!) and delivery by mail is possible.

And mind you: They don't only cheat with expensive items. Recently I tried to buy a small tool for about 10 Euros. The seller kindly asked if I could pay with "Paypal for friends" because otherwise, because all the fees, not much of the 10 Euros will be left for him. So I thought: "What can I lose?" and sent him his 10 Euros. Now I know what I can lose: 10 Euros ;-)
They know very well that nobody will make a large fuss or call the police (which can't do anything about it anyway) because of 10 Euros. So I will only use the secure payment system from now on.

Regards
Max

[AndiGer]

Thank you for the warning. Me myself also report fake items. Sometimes they are deleted within minutes somtetimes not after pone day or so.

The completed item on ebay.de is here: https://www.ebay.de/itm/134718662237

Andi

[Hiwi]

Hi Max,
yes there are thousands of fake offers. I have a friend who is collecting Hilleberg tents. They are very expensive and there are often fakes.

Our police did a good job, they have two real names over the N26 bank, one man from croatia and the other from Lithua. But it think is a gang crime.

At least their job ends at the border, the authorities are not working together. So the money is gone. But this is not my main concern.

I like to warn everyone to be very cautious.

There are too many naive (sorry, including me) HP collectors.

Ralf

[Hiwi]

Hi Andi,
thank you for the link, that the original listing on ebay. Thomas has already sent it to me over PN.

I am in contact with the German police, they asked me for the link.

'Kleinanzeigen' reacts only very slowly and they do not believe every concern, that is my experience.

I hope the HP41CY offer will be deleted until this evening.

Ralf

[floppy]

Example: paypal Robert Feierabend is not honest (experience with Ebay-Kleinanzeigen.de ).
Generally: only paypal "business" or credit card with evidence of agreement / Mail-exchange.
NOTHING else.
Except you know the person personally.

[junobg]

I can confirm the scams - and unfortunately they are not aimed only at HP collectors. I got scammed too trying to purchase a TI. Should have known better!

Anyway - I am now much more careful and usually pay attention to the following:

1. Low ball offers are usually eagarly accepted as long as the payment is made via PayPal Friends. First red flag.

2. The PayPal email / name does not match the seller name. Some scammers even accept bank payments, but the account does not have a German IBAN or it’s a Wise / Transferwise account. Second red flag. At this point I walk away and report the scammer.

3. But stopping here is not much fun, so sometimes I proceed with asking the seller to put some random numbers in the calculator and send me a photo of the display. As you can imagine - all sorts of excuses follow and some of them are very entertaining.

I always report them as that usually results in the ad bring deleted shortly after by Kleinanzeigen.

[pier4r]

(11-07-2023 11:29 AM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  And mind you: They don't only cheat with expensive items. Recently I tried to buy a small tool for about 10 Euros. The seller kindly asked if I could pay with "Paypal for friends" because otherwise, because all the fees, not much of the 10 Euros will be left for him. So I thought: "What can I lose?" and sent him his 10 Euros. Now I know what I can lose: 10 Euros ;-)
They know very well that nobody will make a large fuss or call the police (which can't do anything about it anyway) because of 10 Euros. So I will only use the secure payment system from now on.

semi OT. Similar experience here. Since there I said "I will gladly pay the additional fees" (that normally are 1-2 euros, better than losing 10).

So I send 10 +1 or 2 euros with paypal services and I had once someone trying to slow down things, I gave them a deadline and then I asked for a refund. It happened no problem. (could it be that paypal refunds may not work as expected due to silly arguments from the seller though)