Amateur or professional photographer, beware of scams
Fabien became an amateur photographer six years ago, to make the most of his passion for photography. To do this, he regularly buys lenses via the Leboncoin private ads site, in order to discover and test different lenses. He also uses the Leboncoin website to sell lenses he no longer wants to keep and to make room for new ones. In fact, Leboncoin is ideal for this type of transaction, with so many individuals registered on the site, Fabien never fails to find suitable ads or customers to buy his old lenses. However, over the years he has come to realise that he needs to beware of the many scams that can be found on the second-hand ads site Leboncoin.
The most common Leboncoin sales scam
Fabien explains how he ended up in this sales scam, which is considered to be one of the most common on classified ad sites. He stumbled across a very rare lens that was far too expensive when new, usually selling for €6,500. A sum that was far too excessive for this amateur photographer, who like many others could not afford to go to such extremes. So when he came across the ad for this 200 f/2 (professionals and enthusiasts will understand), on sale for 1,500 euros, Fabien couldn't believe it. He said to himself that this was a very rare deal, but had no idea that it could be a scam, because sometimes people sell their parents' equipment without really knowing what it's worth. Fabien sent a message to the seller asking for more information and photos of the lens, the bag, the serial number, etc. The seller was very cordial and didn't hesitate to send him several.
The seller then quickly offered to lower the price to €1,000 if the buyer wished, to reserve it and pay by bank transfer for the transaction. Fabien sensed that he was in a bit of a hurry, but he wasn't, preferring to take his time before making such a purchase in view of the amount involved. So he decides to ask the seller, out of a clear conscience, if he has the box with the lens, an invoice for the purchase and more photos of the lens. This time, the seller took a long time to reply. Once the additional photos had been sent, his doubts were confirmed... it was indeed a scam. The photos showed a different, older lens and an image of the box that had been stolen from Google images and was too pixelated to read. Then there's the invoice, a Fnac invoice, which at first glance appears to be correct, but when you look in detail you can see that it's dated 2018 with a credit card payment date of 2020, which makes no sense. In fact, the fake seller's contact details seemed to have been added to the invoice paper. Fabien therefore reported the advert directly and blocked the seller. Even though this cost him a lot of time, he's still relieved that he didn't fall for it and avoided losing €1,000.
The most original Leboncoin purchase scam
Fabien was recently confronted with another scam, but this time a more original one: a scam involving purchases between private individuals. A few months ago, Fabien wanted to renew two telephoto lenses. He had a 70-200 and a 200-500 and was thinking of buying a 300 f/2.8 to make one. So he posted two ads on the Leboncoin website with the aim of selling them. The two ads were published at a selling price of €1,000 each. Fabien knew that this price would make it harder to sell from a distance, but he never imagined that people would try to rip him off, almost every day since the ads were published.
A first email scam for the 70-200
Fabien received an offer to buy the 70-200 5 minutes after posting the ad, at the asking price without any negotiation. He thought this was strange, but decided that it was just a stroke of luck. Fabien nevertheless tried to contact the buyer to ask him if he wanted any further information and if he was a local. The buyer replied that he would like the item sent by Colissimo with insurance, and asked the seller for his telephone number and email address so that he could communicate more easily. Fabien had no problem with this and said he could call him if necessary.
From then on, the buyer didn't write any more messages to the seller. The offer that Fabien had validated had to be confirmed by the buyer's payment. It is therefore at the moment of payment that Leboncoin normally validates the purchase and the seller then normally receives notification by email and on the direct messaging system on the Leboncoin site. However, in this particular case, the buyer asked Fabien to check his emails. He replied that if there was no notification on the site, it meant that the payment had not yet been validated. The buyer insisted, however, and Fabien finally went to his email inbox. He then saw that he had received an email from a sender whose address was "[email protected]". The email stated explicitly: "We are pleased to inform you that the buyer has made a successful payment and your account will be credited once you have returned the proof of dispatch or the parcel tracking number".
Fabien then realised that something strange was going on. He hadn't planned to send it online via Leboncoin because the price was too high. What's more, the lens was sold for €1,000, but the email indicated that the seller would receive €1,115 including delivery costs and Leboncoin protection, which was not normal. Fabien typed the sender's email address into Google and realised that it was well-known on websites and forums dealing with online scams. Fabien immediately reported the scam on Leboncoin and on signal-arnaques.com, where he published the scammer's contact details.
What Fabien found by Googling the sender's email address
The 200-500 payment scam
Fabien therefore became very careful on the Leboncoin ad site, where he had to deal with a number of attempted scams in just a few days. For the 200-500 in particular, when it was published a buyer had made a Paysafe transfer to proceed with the purchase, but Fabien felt that this was also a scam, so he preferred to give up. If the buyer had been sincere, he would at least have tried to contact him to explain the payment process.
Secure your transactions between private individuals with Obvy
As you can see from Fabien's case, it's important to be very vigilant when you plan to buy or sell on online ad sites. In particular, it's important to take the time to examine the seller or buyer in question, look at the reviews and don't hesitate to ask as many questions as possible.
What's more, you can use a secure payment method to make transactions with complete peace of mind. Obvy, the secure payment solution for private individuals, makes it easy. As a buyer or seller, you'll receive a full refund if you decide to cancel the transaction in the event of an attempted scam, thanks to a system that sequesters funds until one of the parties has confirmed that everything is in order.