by: Nick Chaney
Save your money! Watch out for internet scams!
There are a million scams lurking around on the internet. I sure hope you’ve never been the victim of one, but chances are you’ve probably noticed a least one scam. A lot of these scams can be luring and tempting and can easily be detected…if you know what you’re looking for.
I’m very passionate about alarming people of various internet scams, in hopes that they will save their money! For this reason I would like to take the time and inform you of the scams I have almost fallen victim to.
I was in the comfort of my own home, searching around on the internet for various wholesale information and companies. I received an email from a “wholesaler” that claimed to have a small yet successful electronic business. At a first glance this person seemed to be a legit supplier of very well priced electronics. He provided me with an eBay ID, web address, and a few comforting words.
The first part of the puzzle that didn’t fit came when I searched for his ID on eBay. The ID showed up with a very large number of positive feedbacks, but none of those feedbacks were as a seller. That seemed somewhat suspicious to me, I contacted him and was told that they were looking for resellers of their products for that reason they didn’t sell on eBay. I thought to myself, well, I guess that is a decent explanation.
I asked many questions, many of which were answered. The only questions that he “forgot”/avoided to answer were questions of personal information (phone #, address, etc...).
I also was concerned because the seller was located overseas and there is not a lot of recourse in case a problem a rised. I let him know and he directed me to an escrow service. He reassured me that by using escrow neither parties would be able to scam one another. He directed me to http://www.global-parcel-service.org, at first glance this “company” looks to run a legit business.
After I thought about it for awhile I realized how fishy a company with a UPS-like logo that I’ve never heard of. I typed in a few variations of global parcel service into the Google search engine and to my astonishment there were very few results. The only results I received were message board posts of http://www.global-parcel-service.org being a front for scams!
The moral of this story is to do your research!