Monday, March 15, 2010

Beware of Scammers!

Good Morning Bloggers! :)


Mr. Keep your nose clean by T.C.

For those of us with Esty Seller accounts the thing that is second only to getting an Etsy Transactions email is an Etsy Conversation email, because this usually means that someone in the Etsy community is asking us a question about our shop items, is praising our work or maybe is notifying us they have put one of our items in their Treasury. These are, usually, all very positive and personal messages. They are a joy to receive and they usually make you feel good about what you are doing. I guess for me, these are like getting little hand written notes from Friends in snail mail :)

So, as I was scrolling thru my emails the other day, I saw a few "Convos" and was rather excited. A couple were from Buddies in the Etsy community and one was from a name unfamiliar to me. On opening this is what I read;

by lalala333

Dear Seller, I am interested in the immediate purchase of your item and will be make payment via cashier check/money order, my private shipping company will handle the shipping, but before payment will be made i need to be sure of who i am dealing with if you are going to be honest and sincere throughout the transaction. A certified cashiers check is cash-able the same day,there is going to be an excess fund on the check ,the excess fund is meant for the private shipping company who will come to your place for pick up of the item, so shipping is not a problem,will you be able to transfer the excess fund to the shipping company the same day you receive the check?. check would be sent to you so when you get payment you can easily cash it at any cashing point near you or deposit in your bank. You'll be sending excess fund to my shipper , which would be meant for shipping arrangement.if you agree, signify your interest by forwarding to me your Final Asking Price, Full Name & Contact Address and Tel #. I await your response soonest.Best and kind regards,email me to.........white.carl33 [!at] rocketmail.com

Wouldn't you know the item they were interesting in "Purchasing" was one of my higher end art pieces.

Of course, I didn't even consider responding, I immediately forwarded this to Abuse@Etsy.com and thankfully they took swift action in shutting down this outfit. They also forwarded a link to a recent Storque article about scammers, which I thought was rather interesting and especially the comments that followed.

So, I just wanted to share this with everyone, these people are out there. I have received many of these over the years thru my email accounts and usually ignore them, it doesn't bother me, it is just an irritant but this just seemed a little more personal because it was thru Etsy and I think they are getting more devious. I know they are everywhere and so I am trying not to be paranoid about this (Taking a Deep Breathe, realign my balance, no more swear words, calm, peaceful, positive thoughts)

And now I am off to read my emails :)

Happy Painting/Creating! :) T.

17 comments:

Emily said...

good post - I got one of those convos recently where the person was wanting me to send them some products for them to 'review' on their blog that only had 25 followers. yikes - spammer!

Rainy Day Gardener said...

It's a sad world T. Glad you were wise of the scam from the get go and directly got Etsy involved. Bah...rotten scammers!

Jaime Haney said...

I've gotten emails like this also. I knew they were spammers by the way they kept referring to my "item". Who says that? Also, anyone who has such a line of B.S. has got to be spam. Also, the english is usually blatantly wrong, so you know it's probably the same people you see on Dateline or 60 minutes that are all in a room full of computers reaching out to millions of people asking for a bank account number so they can give you loads of free money... yeah right.

Don't you just want to write back and tell them off? You did the right thing, though. They are getting more devious though going through Etsy.

I like your Mr. Keep Your Nose Clean ;)

Anonymous said...

Thankfully haven't gotten any of those yet, but will definitely send them along to abuse if I do. Good idea to bring this to our attention :)

Teddy Started It said...

ARRRRrrrrrrgh!! That sort of thing really gets me worked up. Just goes to show you what a presence Etsy has become. Well, happy for you you didn't fall for it. Hope you had some better emails to read than that one.

cabin + cub said...

ugh... i hate email scammers... sucks that they have started to infiltrate etsy now too. first paypal, then ebay... now etsy... sigh.

Annette said...

I've read of happening to other Etsy sellers and I'm sorry it happened to you too but glad you knew it was a scam! I hope it doesn't make you leary of convos because generally they're something to look forward to!!

Almost Precious said...

It's sad that the world has dishonest people in it. I haven't gotten any of those etsy convos, guess they aren't interested in any of my stuff, it's not expensive enough for them...Thankfully ! :D
Glad you reported it to etsy, sometimes we are inclined to just delete the message and let it slide but if they are not reprimanded or thwarted in any way they'll just keep doing it. As you point out it is up to us to make it as difficult as possible for these scammers to continue doing what they do.

Erica said...

Thank you! I have received this convo several times for our expensive knives and art. I am glad that etsy did a storque article on it too!

Artesia said...

Thanks for sharing! I have never recieved one of thoses, but I know of several sellers who have. Do people still fall for that kind of thing? Shesh.

Alessandra @Tribal Times said...

How creepy. Glad you had your wits about you- so many people fall for this!
-Alessandra

Artsnark said...

thanks for sharing - seems to be going around lately

MAB from OtterCatHaus said...

Scammers. . . terrible stuff. I almost fell for a UPS phishing email the other day.

Bethany Dirksen said...

We get those emails all the time at my day time job. I have since learned the normal language they use in them and can spot them a mile away! Good idea to share it with others so we can learn together.

Periwinkle Paisley said...

I would've forwarded to EtsyAbuse just on the offense of bad grammar ;) Some unlucky souls must fall for this though because they keep trying.

Jane said...

I can't believe what some people do to try and scam others. Good thing that Etsy admin took action too.

Got It From My Mama said...

I haven't ever had one of these but it's good to be aware that it goes on. Thanks for the post T