Coming from 2 seperate cases.
Case number two is more frightening so I will disclose this one first. Guy says his name is Dave selling a refinished 1957 les paul for around 3,000-5,000 dollars in several ads online. I contact him and we negotiate $3,000.00 for the guitar when he pops this on me.
Door2door-online.com He says we will use this third party service because I was leary of wether or not the guitar was actually a 1957. Says with this great company I can check it out safely for 3-10 days. SWEET! Right?!
Ehh WRONG. I begin proceeding in the process thinking it looked good and credible. They tell me I need to wire the 3,000.00 to Maria Rudacille through western union money transfer.
Ohh. I had the 3 grand in my hands and was at the teller although I had a slightly bad feeling. The phone operator tells me it will cost around 150 to do this transaction, I back off. I go home and call the so called, "door2door-online.com" where they inform me everything will be fine and to just send the total of 3,000 because the seller is paying the fees and that the fees they told me of on the phone were fees from both western union AND Door2door-online combined. But he didn't know I had NEVER mentioned door2door on the phone to the the teller.
So they (western union) would have no idea what "fees" door2door may have. This was my first clue. I passed it off and went to a new location to complete this transaction. Luckily, the man at the store there, wanted to do this by paper and not by a telephone teller. As God's grace would have it he informed me that he wasnt sure of the destination and that I should double check this address before sending.
My gut by this time had taken over partially by this and part because I could find NO info AT ALL on door2door other than the email link. So, I go to the ebay community and enter a discussion forum asking about door2door-online.com
Well I shouldn't have been surprised that NO ONE had EVER heard of it. But a couple of good guys began steering me in the right direction. One brought up a list of 12 signs that you are being defrauded, Many on the list fit my cenario. Another did a whois.net search on the domain name. Come to find out door2door-online.com was created about a month ago.
Needless to say, I took my 3 grand right back to the bank and blocked all contact from optimaforte / dave.
Buyer beware..
Case 1 is simple.
Again 56 goldtop, but this guy was just plain stupid. The other guy almost had me which really REALLY freaked me out. This other guy though. He goes by Vulta. He had a legit 56 serial number in his listing. I requested more photos he accomodated.
I asked for photos of the back of the headstock. He sent me a photo with the serial number blocked out by microsoft paint. I told him to remove it because I wanted to see the serial#. He ignored me at first. Dodged the question next. He tells me he lives close to me, so I ask to see it. He says guitar is in hawaii. I again ask for the pic of the headstock finally responds saying his camera is broken and cannot take any pictures.
Then after arguing a little he sends me a NEW picture with his name on a piece of paper next to the guitar. Somehow he did this with a broken camera while in LA and the guitar was in Hawaii. Hmm. I ask AGAIN. This time he just flat out REFUSED to show me a serial number photo on the headstock and said he would NOT give me the number because I am a stranger. He must have forgotten that he put the number in the listing. Idiot. Buyer beware.
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