TradeMe escrow

[oceaneering1234]

http://www.trademe-escrow.com/flash_intro.asp thats the web site to a place i am about to do business with but I think it's a fishy place, so im holding off.. anyone ever hear of it, or can give me their advice...

[skshopster]

i am in the middle of a transaction that seems to be fraud, i would hold off as i am investigating it now,let me know if you get any info, i will do the same.

[oceaneering1234]

so far this is the only info that I have.. i am buying a bike form someone for 3,800.00 bucks.. he says he lives in londoon and to use Trade me escrow cause he has one there as well.. says send the money to the escrow, and i get the bike, and have 10 days to look over the bike, and when i am satisfies with the auto that i send a release of the funds.. the info that i have on Trade me escrow is as follows..

TradeMe escrow
United States
475 Riverside Drive Suite 253
New York, NY 10115
And
TradeMe Escrow
United Kingdom
7 Kings Parade, London, W12 9BA,
and phone number upon reqauest...

When i e mailed and asked for the phone number I got this response

-Dear David,

We were getting more than 600 calls a day. We spent ALL day on the phones. Which isn't a bad thing if you are talking to people ready to buy a vehicle,
but too much of our time was spent with people just wanting to talk. We employed "phone idiots" to handle the calls.
A "phone idiot" is a person given the vital task of answering a company's phones, but they know virtually nothing about the business and typically do more harm than good. However they work cheap and they free up the valuable people within the company so that they can run the business.
Our valuable people are busy in areas requiring their particular expertise and thus are unavailable to answer phones.
Or simply put, their time is more valuably served with other tasks.
Therefore we were forced to employ a legion of "phone idiots". We soon found this to be a poor remedy.
Regrettably we were left with no other practical solution than to require everyone to contact us exclusively by email.
The seller will not be able to receive the funds without your purchase decision. The transaction is fully insured and there is no risk for you, if you have questions please contact us via e-mail.


Sincerely,
Frank Andrews
Sales Manager

so far this is ALL the info I have, and i have not released money to anyone cause it seems so fishy.

[skshopster]

very simular to mine, i was trying to by a car for 8500$ and ws told to send a 3000 deposit, using western union and with all my research i felt i was safe then when once i sent all info i got a e-mail that said western union had stopped the transaction, so i calledwestern union and they confirmed that the person from trademe had picked up the money and it had obviously cleared. i am now trying to get a call from trademe and not much luck, also western union says they have no control over international transactions-i am also going to fight this-as there is a specific info that western union is supposed to require to protect us. anyway it is exactly as mine 10 day to inspect use trademe to be safe in london and no contact with trademe, they are supposed to call me today so we will see, i will let you know,for now i think you ust saved yourself alot of headache and would hold off on the transaction, try to talk on phone with seller maybe? thank you

[peg]

Western union affords you NO protection from being scammed. Their protection is limited to the other party having the appropriate information that you supplied them.

Please refer to
http://www.westernunion.com/info/faqSecurity.asp for some information about Western Union. Western Union should really only be used for transfering funds to someone that you KNOW and TRUST. Once it is in their system and the other party has the required information, they can divert the transaction to some other location (so that it's harder to be tracked).

I would STRONGLY advise AGAINST using Western Union for any transaction on the internet.

In cases of large ticket item transactions over the internet, I would INSIST on a Legitamite escrow company.
http://escrow.com is one and ebay actually has several listed (at the bottom of http://pages.ebay.com/help/community/escrow.html ).

If you chose to use an escrow site... DO NOT click on the links in the messages. Type them in your browser directly as the addresses can be made to look like they are legit when really they just direct you to a forged fake (Look-a-like) site.

Also, any site that hands you some sort of line about verifying their information such as a phone call should just steer you away. Even sites like eBay can be reached by phone. I know... I have done it. They do make it difficult for you to get to someone of importance (so to speak) but it can be done.

Trust you your instincts.... not your greed. That's how I got scammed (and ultimately started this site). I have said it many times before in this forum (and others).... If you do a google search (or any search engine) and you get NO hits that's just as bad as getting a large number of negative hits. Any GOOD company is bound to have both Positive and Negative information about them. If they have been around for more than a month (or so) then you should definitely get something on the searches.

I know it maybe too little too late, but I hope this helps, if not now, certainly for the future.

As a final note, in an attempt to try and catch some of these scammers, if you could post the WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHY, and WHERE about the scammer (as much as you have and in detail please) here, it will help as many of our posters/readers use this information to track them down and get them shut down.

Thanks.

[oceaneering1234]

the guy who i think is trying to scam me gave this following info

Name Jim Plumier

Street Address: 4 Dansey Place

City: London

Zip Code: W1D 6EY

Country: United Kingdom

the total price for the bike including the shipping fees will be $3,800.00 .

If you cant open the case at TradeMe Escrow contact me with your shipping address and i will set up the escrow account.

Thanks

Jim



I hope this helps in shutting this guy down if he is indeed a frawd which i think TradeMe Probbably is... thanks for all of your input everyone.. you all saved me some money most likely..

[JaxHot]

What are the e-mail addresses the scammers are using???
Thanks

[oceaneering1234]

the address the guy is ussing that i think is a scammer is;

jimplumierr@yahoo.com

the e mail from the manager of TradeMe Escrow is

support@trademe-escrow.com

[oceaneering1234]

any new news yet??

[oceaneering1234]

Any news on this? im lookign for closure.lol