Dodgy Customers?

Last night I received an email, the easiest way to explain is to put the email on here.

hi,I’m James by name,i saw your item posted on here and am interested in purchasing it,before i proceed with payment i will like to ask some question about the item: are you the real owner of the item?is the item still available for sell?what is the present condition of the item?do accept PayPal as your mode of payment and what is the final asking price of the item?so pls kindly get back to me on my email for fast respond:

I was a bit wary because of the dodgy english, even tho “James” has an english surname. I gave him the benefit of doubt and replied saying it was available and in good condition and confirmed the price, despite all these details being on my listing on my folksy shop.
He replied with this:

Thanks for mailing back,I’m a honest and straight forward person and always want to be treated the same way, are you sure of the item condition?this is only what can make me to be worried cos i can not come over to view it,i am an oceanographer and i am buying this item as a gift for my sister which she won’t know nothing about it until it get delivered to her,i am at sea right now,and I can only pay through PayPal and you can put the PayPal charges on me because as at present,i don’t have access to my bank account online,but i have it attached to my PayPal account,So please kindly get back to me immediately so i can proceed with the payment and after the payment has been done,i have a pick up agent that will come around to pick the item up immediately after payment.

This has now rung a few alarm bells and I dont want to reply. My husband (whose artwork it is) has told me not to reply. Shame its a big sale.

I have posted it on here, in the hope that you agree that it is dodgy and I’m not about to loose out on a big sale! and also to warn people that potentially something like this could go seriously wrong.

Yeap, typical! If you do a search in the Forums here you will see quite a few threads about scams and the typical format. These are in general not just on Folksy. It’s best to ignore them and contact Folksy Admin.

This scam has been going around for quite a while on various platforms. Delete and ignore.

I think at some point we have all recieved an email like this - if you email it to folksy support they will suspend the account of the dodgy person but often they just set up a new one.
Sasha

Last time I heard about this scam, he was working on an off-shore oil rig: but unfortunately the rest of it is all too familiar. Sorry to think that you thought you had a big sale, that must be awful for you.

Rhiannon

You know, you’d think after all this time they’d create a more convincing load of rubbish wouldn’t you?
Stupid scammers!! - though it’s definitely helpful looking on here as everyone lets people know if they’ve come across a scam & what to expect. :blush:
I think if anyone says anything strange in an email and you’re definitely unsure- either don’t reply at all and possibly miss a sale- (but better safe than sorry), or just simply direct people back to the folksy shop & say all the information is there and any purchase has to go through there.

I’ve had few of them. They always target the most expensive item from my inventory. I replied to the first one, but got the same reply as you did. It’s a scam! Report anything like that to Folksy, so they can block the user account and ignore the emails.

It’s a well known scam.
They always target your most expensive item.
Ignore and run a way!
Shirley x