Pets4homes ad - thoughts?

[FindTheTruth]

Thought I'd share this in case others have the same experience. We called an advertiser on Pets4home but had niggles. She offered to bring the cat to us for payment in cash. Pedigree £1000. She asked a bit about us and our home. She wasn’t pushy. It could be genuine. …

But we had red flags:

• Location The Pets4homes ad location address was not where the cat actually was. In fact, we couldn’t see the cat in the home, without travelling to the other side of the country.

• We enquired, thinking the cat was near our home, but found out the cat is hundreds of miles away after giving information about us. Said the cat was moved 3 months ago. (yet advert was placed 2 weeks ago.)

• Payment She said she didn’t want to use the safe deposit on Pets4Homes saying she was not comfortable putting her bank a/c details in

• Ownership Claimed to have paperwork for vaccinations, microchip etc but when we asked for it, she claimed she had transferred documentation to her friend because she was in such poor health. (Not too ill to drive hundreds of miles immediately though🧐). She was unwilling to send photos of the documents saying "privacy for the next owner was an issue" (doesn’t make sense?)

Other

• She said she could only make decisions on the day, due to her health, in terms of whether she could drive the pet to us, yet offered to come today or tomorrow.

• On the call, most of the talking was about how ill she was and why she wasn't in the location advertised. Said she has 2 homes and said the floors were being done at the address in the advert and that she couldn’t park and it was easier to live at her other address.

So...
We declined saying that we needed proof that she owns the cat. She said she couldn’t because she’d signed documents over to her friend. She suggested that we could speak to her friend and transfer money to him. We found the whole thing strange.

Run! Really suspicious and I’d be reporting to P4H.

Sounds like a scam to me. When every reasonable question or request is met with some complex explanation about why it's not possible, it's 95% likely to be a scam, and 5% likely to be a needy, dramatic sort of seller you wouldn't want to deal with anyway.

I'm a cat breeder (I'm aware I'll be slated for admitting this) and this sounds really dodgy!

I think homes4pets deposit scheme is really good for buyers and I use it.

I would avoid any breeder who wouldn't use it and definitely report them to the website.

Thank you for the replies. We're just processing it. :)

It sounds dodgy as fuck to me. There’s loads of breed rescues on catchat.org.

So. Many. red flags.

I reckon cat doesn't exist.

Is there a police internet fraud unit you can report to?

Firstly, and am sure you won’t, but do t purchase this “cat”.

Secondly,I am not familiar with the workings of this site as I refuse to look at it. But am assuming there must be some kind of “report” function for the site?

I know I’m being simplistic, but I wish people would stick to either registered breeders or rescue centres. P4H, Gumtree etc just scream scams/abuse/over breeding to me.

There is no cat.
They want you to pay PayPal friends and family so there is no way you can claim your money back.

Report to the website and adopt a rescue.

Its a cat not a lesser spotted pushmepullyou there will be hundreds nearer to you and in rescue centres not apparently in the hands of some dodgy wheeler dealer. Just get a cat dont make your life complicated dealing with this kind of crap.

Thanks for all the replies. (We won't buy this cat). We won't get a cat unless we can see it with it's mother, or if it's an older cat either a registered breeder or at least see proof of ownership. We will get some rescues again too. the reason we wanted this breed is because we lost our 20 year old boy who was partly this breed.

Anyway thanks again.

I'm sorry for your loss. I can totally understand why you'd want to fill your cat-shaped hole with a kitty of a similar breed. Try looking at CatChat for breed-specific rescues - you may find just the right one.

Thanks Arbadacarba and Fluffy for mentioning catchat.org for breed rehoming. nothing available atm but bookmarked.

My worry would be that they were planning in stealing a local cat and selling it to you.

No, you are right to walk away. Do report it but that site is not very helpful with dealing with dodgy breeders. As have discovered with who we bought a puppy from 'in a family pet' environment, which turned out to be an elaborate set up

That's pretty terrifying Purple. we'll avoid. glad I shared our experience. I read that by law dogs have to been seen with their mother if younger than 6 months, so why not cats? or have I got that wrong? not that this was a young kitten, it was an adult. but still...