Sad as it may seem, at Pack and Send Balmain we save a client from being scammed almost on a weekly basis. We pack and ship goods for our clients and Ebay sellers use our services frequently, so unfortunately we see a lot of scams.
Whenever we receive a request to ship to what we deem is a suspect country, Malaysia is a favourite at the moment, we always urge the client to verify the buyer of the goods. We also conduct a quick search on the internet for the buyers name and address and in many cases the particular buyer has already been identified as a scammer.
At times when we alert a client they will even argue with us explaining that they have received a payment confirmation from Paypal. When we ask them to check their Paypal account they soon find there is no record of the payment. The Paypal scam is one we see most frequently at the moment.
We shudder to think how many people in the area are being scammed on a daily basis, given the volume that we see in our store. Despite the frequent warnings in the media and on the WEB people are still lured in. Unfortunately the scammers can be quite cunning they offer a good price without making it too high to be suspicious, and then they will create a sense of urgency pressuring the seller to ship quickly so they have less time to be suspicious.
Merchants also need to be very diligent; we ourselves were almost the victims of a scam of $20,000, with stolen credit cards. Some shops may not be aware that if they take a credit card payment on the phone they are liable if the credit card is stolen. Once the stolen card is reported the bank will demand a refund from the merchant and they will then be out of pocket.
Scammers are more brazen now, we even had one send us a copy of his passport as a proof of ID. Again, a quick search on the internet identified him as a well known scammer that’s been operating for over 10 years!
Our advice is, if you a selling to an overseas buyer (or even a local buyer), do your research, don’t ship the goods until you have the money and don’t trust emails or supplied web site links.
If you have any questions about the best way to ship your goods, the Pack and Save Balmain team are always available to give advice.