Buyer / Seller Scams

Currently there is a scam where a buyer will check to see if your vehicle is still for sale, they will usually include a phone number however it will be a fake. Their email address will almost always be a gmail, hotmail, yahoo or other free account. If you reply to the email you will receive an email moments later asking the price of the vehicle and that they will make payment though paypal. If you proceed further they will make you believe they have made an attempt to pay you but are having problems. This will continue further and they will attempt to extract more and more information. They will eventually either say that you have some settings wrong with your paypal account and they will volunteer to login to your account and fix this so that they can pay you the money, or they will have enough information by this time about you to login themselves. At this point they will use your bank accounts associated with paypal to withdraw money.

We've been alerted to another scam which operates in the following way:
An overseas buyer offers to buy your car. They will want to send you a cheque for an amount in excess of the purchase price of your car and will ask you to send the change back to them or to pay the change to a local shipping agent. There are several variations on the theme. If you get an offer like this from overseas, we recommend that you be alert to a possible scam.

Another scam operates as follows:
Typically a car/bike/boat, etc will be offered for sale at a very low price. The seller will say that the item is located overseas or in a location that makes it difficult to inspect the item. The seller will ask you to send them a deposit or pay for the item before they will arrange to send it to you. If you get an offer like this, we recommend that you be alert to a possible scam.

At motorfind we do our best to review every new listing posted on our website and we investigate deals that are "Too good to be true".

• Speak to the seller directly. Most online scams are conducted via email only. If you cannot contact the seller on the phone, please report it to us.
• Do NOT send money overseas. We strongly advise against using instant cash wire transfer services like Western Union or Moneygram to purchase a vehicle from an overseas seller.
• Motorfind DOES NOT operate any form of online payment services (such as BidPay or any escrow services) for vehicle purchase transactions. Report any offer of such a service to us immediately. If you suspect a scam please click here to report it to motorfind.com.au or click on www.scamwatch.gov.au and follow the links to report it to the relevant authorities.

We will take this opportunity to inform you that it is solely the sellers responsibility when dealing with buyers and we suggest for the sellers and buyers safety that transactions should take place face to face.