Oh my goodness!
@, it's not a creative scam at all... just a scam. SCAM SCAM SCAM SCAM to the nth degree.
It's good that you posted here to check. You have saved yourself a world of pain.
I hope you did not upload your driver licence information. If so, you should be aware that your identity WILL have been stolen, and it's the worst sort of ID theft as D/Ls cannot - to the best of my knowledge - be reissued with a different licence number.
If you didn't upload it, that is one worry less.
This sort of scam is rife. Do you know what one of the main features is? The item (car, bike, caravan, boat, whatever) is being sold at a bargain price. A 2012 Jayco Expanda is going to set you back around $40,000. You might be able to get one for cheaper than that, but I strongly doubt that you'd be able to get one for less than $35,000. When you see something of that market value being offered for less than $10,000 (a quarter of the market value), ring-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding SCAM!
There will always be a story about why it's being sold at that price. Being seconded, in the army, on an oil rig, yada yada yada. These are classic con excuses for speed of sale, low price, not able to be contacted, buyer can't come over to inspect, etc.
NEVER - and I repeat this in very large font - NEVER buy a vehicle sight unseen. Inspect it. Get it checked out by your state's equivalent of RACV. Make sure it's a clean title, no suspicious VIN details, etc. Take for test drive.
NEVER - and I repeat this in even bigger font - NEVER fall for the eBay escrow story. eBay does not do escrow. eBay doesn't hold money in this way. eBay doesn't have an eBay Motors subsidiary company to facilitate sight-unseen purchases. People can advertise cars and other vehicles on eBay, but it's a sort of Classified Ads situation for that category of item. You can read the details of the Motors policy here in eBay's Help pages, but it's a little unclear, so I'll outline the main points.
- Seller lists vehicle for sale on eBay site (not on Facebook or some other site);
- It's in the Vehicles category on eBay - here's the link for the Caravans & Motorhomes subcategory in the Vehicles category;
- The vehicles can be listed with a reserve price, so even though there might be low starting bids, most of the vehicles will have a reserve price below which the seller will not sell;
- Interested bidders/buyers will make their bids/purchases;
- Details of the buyer go to the seller;
- Buyers are able to inspect the vehicle but only after being the successful buyer;
- eBay is not involved in arranging the sale details, nor in having the item delivered to you and in this weird idea of a 5-day inspection period with seller being responsible for return postage. That just does not happen.
I would not buy a vehicle listed on eBay. You cannot exchange contact information until the sale is done, so there's no opportunity to inspect, test drive, etc., before committing to the purchase. (In fact, I would not buy a vehicle sight unseen. I would also not buy a vehicle listed at a price that is too good to be true. "Too good to be true" may well be one of the most overworked phrases in the English language; that is because it holds a valuable truth that could stop people from being scammed since scams and cons primarily rely on people falling for precisely that sort of thing - i.e., too good to be true.)
Of course, once you have the seller's contact details, you can go to pick up with a view to inspecting before paying - and that's fine in an item pickup situation. The seller might push you to pay, but you would have every right to inspect and have RACV etc inspect before you actually make payment. If the vehicle is not as described, if the inspection shows a problem, I'd tell the seller, "I'm sorry; I'm not going to proceed, as I don't consider that this is as described. Please send through a cancellation request, and I will click YES so that you don't end up with Final Value Fees."
With this sort of scam, as soon as you've identified it (and presumably not transferred any money or provided any ID, particularly D/L), the best thing to do is... disengage.
No contacting the "seller" to rant about "I know what you're doing" and "You dirty scammer" and so on.
No saying "I'm not going ahead with this."
Just block from your email or Facebook or whatever it may be, don't reply to any contact, and don't get upset. If you come out of this sort of scam having lost nothing but false expectations, you've had a good escape. If you feel like crusading, it's worth passing the word along to family members and friends in the hope that, eventually, the majority of Australians will reach herd immunity to this sort of scam.
