We have been advised to alert bike classified ad viewers and posters of a fraud scam when contacted about their ad.
You are contacted by a person interested in your bike. They offer to pay you by cashiers check by someone in your country that owes them money. The check is sent to you and you are asked to deduct the price of the bike and transfer the rest of the money to them asap. The idea being you will transfer money to them before you find out the cashiers check is a forgery.
We hope that by publishing this information and putting links to it from our classifieds section we will help educate sellers and put off scammers. This is happening all over the net and with different types of items for sale. We do all we can to help prevent this sort of thing happening but unfortunately we cannot control who contacts you about your sale item or their intentions.
Web Classified Tips.
* Consider using escrow services to protect your purchase. If there is any doubt about a transaction, use a well known and reliable escrow service where available. We recommend using "Escrow.com" for safe transactions.
* Use the same caution in sending cash that you do in real life. You should not undertake a transaction about which you would feel uncomfortable in your regular life off the Web. You should verify the trustworthiness of a seller/buyer before sending cash or cash substitutes, like Banker's Drafts, bank transfers or especially western union transfers. If the other party is requesting western union transfer you should immediately be suspicious since this is sending cash and not traceable.
* Use common sense when you disclose personal information. Disclose only that personal information necessary to complete the transaction. You should not disclose information that you would not disclose in an off-line real life commercial transaction. Remember we will never ask you for your password or credit card or bank account numbers in an email.
If you have more information about these scams or who the correct authority is to report them please post as a reply here. Finally, be careful.
--
Webmaster
Adventure Cycling Association