Have I been scammed?!

[PlaneNoiz]

Part of me thinks yes but part me of me thinks no because I’ve been to her house.

Sold a nice item via a neighbourhood selling group and as it was heavy and I had a car I offered to drop it to the ladies house. She was very lovely and the house was lovely! But when I asked for payment, she asked for my bank details. I’ve sent them through and she says she’ll transfer…but having looked online it seems this is a common scam?!

But worst case I’ve been to her house and know her address. Or are people genuine and will transfer?

I don't see how that would work unless they had given you cash (which a transfer isn't).

I can't screenshot my Halifax

Our local Police Stations advise to swap goods and payment/CASH outside their premises during daylight. (They have cameras.)
I think that is a great idea for peace of mind when selling items to strangers met on the internet.

I have accounts with both Halifax and Revolut. I’ve noticed that about 1/10 ish times when transferring from Halifax into revolut, it isn’t instant.. sometimes the banks hold it to do extra checks.. especially for more so for new payees.. What I suspect happened is she totally forgot to do it so said she had… then did it later, to save embarrassment of taking you she’s forgotten. Either way I’ve seen she’s paid now. Cash on collection going forward… Especially for any high value times… there’s an app a lot of our local scammers were using a while back that makes it look like a transfer has been done, they show the confirmation to the seller and walk away with said item. They were buying mobile phones froM people, showing them this fake app then vanishing. Scarier thing is they were doing it as collections, so knew where the seller lived etc!!!

I was just coming on here to say, I’ve had issues transferring to Revolut & Monzo in the past. They are notoriously used by scammers, and so sometimes traditional banks run extra checks before releasing the funds.
The rules changed in October which gave additional protections to people sending money via faster payment. The bank now has to reimburse victims of scams, and so it seems like buyers bank may have been running checks on you to make sure your account isn’t being used for scams & is legit.

Nevertheless, sounds like from the comments a lot of lessons have been learnt by a lot of people.

It works because they ask for the difference in cash, not by bank transfer or for you to pay the difference into a different bank account than the one that sent you the money.

It's only been an hour!

Others have helped in explaining but hard to give a full picture.

Came across this below which covers most of it. Incidentally, my bank was Barclays too.

Can be small scale to Pablo Escobar territory.

They can hack other accounts, send to you then ask you to withdraw the money or have accounts they can't access because of all sorts.

Also hence Western & similar have to do checks, but there are a lot of fake IDs too.

https://www.barclays.co.uk/fraud-and-scams/money-mule-scams/

Glad you got your money OP. I don't think it was a bad thing to deliver. At least you knew where the buyer lived and they couldn't completely vanish from you.

My DD sold a desk yesterday. She's a very young adult, but a bit anxious about asking for money and asked me to go to the door with her. Buyer seemed a nice young woman but had already text my DD, before arrival, asking if she could do a transfer.

Desk was in three parts as it had been dismantled. The young woman had carried the first two bits to her car but hadn't even mentioned money, so before she took the last part I purposely said "how would you like to make the payment?" All of a sudden she was "oh yes, let me do it now". They both had Monzo accounts so did it that way and it was instant, but I trust no-one, no matter how friendly they are? She seemed genuine but I wasn't prepared to let her take everything before sorting it. She could have easily driven off without paying.

The good thing is you've learned a valuable lesson from this and will do things differently if you sell anything else. Enjoy your £70!

Still doesn't mean buyer sent it when they said they did

Money laundering relies on the money passing through a legitimate business or the bank account of someone not related to the criminals. It's also why you shouldn't evade paying tax because once someone shady finds out you're not declaring all your earnings they can exploit that and try to blackmail you into laundering money for them.

So glad you received it

I've found Revolut pretty unreliable when it comes to receiving payments. I used it for a while to collect payment for freelance work, some payments took ages, some didn't arrive at all and I had to use another account.

Aww I'm so glad for you op!
Thanks to other posters for tips and remember to always have the correct change so they can't put you on the spot, saying they only have x amount, what you have no change? Oh maybe I'll stand here awkwardly til you let me have it cheaper or free????
That actually happened to me. It was a pushy old lady, over a £2 item! She was visibly annoyed when I had the change for a fiver and as she put the five pounds away opened her purse full of change... sigh. One of my many Facebook market place irritants 😂

Gosh! I’m glad you had the change. This thread has been so useful in knowing the tricks and scams that could take place.

It has op. If you do decide to carry on selling a good way to sort the wheat from the chaff is only give a partial address (although its not 100% fool proof) . Say its Monday but they can't come straight away, give them the road name and postcode but not the house number. Tell them to drop you a message when they are about to set off, and you'll send the number/name. That way if you don't hear anything you know they aren't coming and can carry on with your day. Serious people who actually want stuff will engage and have no problem with this.
Mum gave someone her full address straight away and they didn't show up when agreed...but they did turn up at 11 o' clock PM (!) the next night and woke her up- hence me taking over Facebook sales!

It might be more gracious to accept you were wrong

Do bear in mind though that the overwhelming majority of sellers and buyers are totally on the level. I've sold loads of stuff on marketplace, never once to a scammer.

They are pretty easy to spot, if you aren't 100% sure just block em

The buyer also sent me a message this morning double checking it had gone through and offering to meet in town and give cash if needed (and that she would speak to her bank in case there was an error). But I said it’s all gone through!

Why would she offer that when the money has left her account? If I had paid and the recipient said they didn't have the money I would offer to call my bank at most.

Whenever I have transferred from my current account to my Revolut, it comes through instantly from both a building society account and HSBC account.

This thread doesn't add up.

She said she would call her bank to check and if there’s any issues she would give me cash. She said she doesn’t do transfers often either! So essentially offered to cancel the payment if it was processing. I think that’s nice.

Thats your problem if it doesn’t add up. I’ve been nothing but honest. Weird comment from you.

I find it bizarre you’d really think I’d lie on this thread. How rude. Thank you to the kind people. I’ll be leaving the thread now.

@PlaneNoiz Really don't leave the thread just because you've come across a rather nasty one-dimensional keyboard warrior who only believes a thing if it actually happened to her. There are many people like this hanging about waiting to chuck in their dubious wisdom and they are best ignored or laughed at.

Good for you but as many others have said it doesn't always cone through instantly from a normal bank account to Revolut. It's very rude to suggest that the thread doesn't add up just because it doesn't match your experience.

Thank you. As you’ve probably realised in this thread I have very low self confidence and I’m quite an anxious person so I take comments like this personally! Why would I lie about this it would be very weird!!!