I’m sorry to hear what you’re going through
Good luck
full disclosure: a guy on Muffwiggler is also awaiting an item under similar circumstances for the same reason - hoping I can get all this sorted out. I used to be a good seller over on Muff’s - I sold thousands of pounds worth of kit over the years (eurorack, a Juno 6, a Nord Modular…so much stuff…) but recently it’s all gone to shit. I do have some real circumstances which have made things very hard of late but also it is shitty behaviour, I could have done more, and I own it.
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Admitting this and actually owning it in public like this takes courage. I hope your circumstances get sorted soon, especially now that I’m relieved to know Adam will not take a loss.
Seeing the efforts of everyone to help out and support is really cool, this place is great <3
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Top Forum 
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Great outcome, if rather late. Adam can probably put this behind himself easier than you can, we don’t need to rake over the coals, but hopefully the factors which took you to that crazy judgement in that moment can be addressed now, it’s gotta be for your own good to ‘own it’ as you put it and that’ll be a good start for you to focus on attending to all the other important stuff. We can’t pretend that there wasn’t real anger about this, but i’m sure most folk will wish you well with your evidently challenging circumstances which we can perhaps look at in isolation with a healthy dose of empathy and it looks like you’ll learn from this too.
This is good news and thankfully the damage has been minimised all round.
PS : the next handful of posts below are general marketplace anecdotes removed from the soon to be closed sales listing - this topic is broader and the op can edit/reflect on where he wants it to go etc now the primary issue is in resolution
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I recently let my guard down and got stung for £760 for a virus ti2 desktop via gumtree. ‘Sellers’ name was Andrew M Lloyd (If anyone else recognises this name or has been scammed by this person please get in touch). Barclays was the receiving bank.
So while your situation sucks it could be worse. The following is some advise based on my experience.
If you sent the money by bank transfer you need to contact your banks fraud department. This has to be done asap after realising you have been the victim of on line fraud.
They will alert the receiving bank who will set up an investigation. They usually freeze the recipients account(s) as a precaution.
It may be too late to recover your funds but it is possible they can be retrieved if they have not been withdrawn from the scammers account. His account(s) may be frozen already as he may have scammed other people who were quicker to react.
There is also action https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/ but they are a bit of a joke tbh.
If you have the sellers name and address you can look into legal proceedings against him.
The banks are the best route to recover funds. I am awaiting the results of the investigation which is being carried out by Barclays. This can take up to three weeks.
Just read your other post stating you paid with paypal friends and family. Not so good but I am sure paypal will still take it very seriously as you have email evidence showing that the ‘seller’ requested this form of payment. Paypal are quick to freeze accounts if they suspect fraud so if you haven’t gotten on to them do so immediately as this fool may have scammed a bunch of people.
Paypal will freeze accounts if they see activity they regard as suspicious so they may have funds held.
The other info regarding bank accounts may be of help so I’ll leave my last post.
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I’ve decided to stop paying for stuff like this with PayPal friends and family. I now pay to cover the sellers PayPal charges and only pay with a credit card as it gives you an extra layer of protection.
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Yea big time. Ive never had a problem buying / selling on Elektronauts but its defo wise to cover yourself as much as possible. No family&friends etc.
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Always pay the fee, its not worth it when the money vanishes.
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Ditto. I’ve had a close call once on here, the device was sent but was packaged really badly and turned up damaged and the seller refused to refund me even partially. Was pretty unpleasant but worked out okay as shipping insurance paid out. Definitely would not do F&F in future just to have an easy way out of that kind of situation.
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There is a lot of scam artists on gum tree. I was nearly done for a ti2 as well.think it was a different person.as soon as I changed my mind and was going to pick it up instead of getting it sent he sent me a message saying it was sold
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Just checked I think it was the same bloke as his name was andy
@Stumm42 I properly walked into what in hindsight was an obvious decoy. The fucker sent me an empty box!
I reckon it was probably the same guy. You can see his other adverts in the pictures. This vile scum bag gave his name as andy. Gumtree 9+ years seller. Location Worcester.
You can see what I could have won compared with what I actually received:
Ripping off the next man is fucking low. You don’t know the persons circumstances. You could be literally taking the food from their mouths. Someone may have saved for months to buy an expensive synth etc. Makes me sick to think of these dirty rats exploiting peoples humanity in order to befool and rob them. Bring back the rope.
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Replying to the various people saying that paypal fee is best paid and then you have a better chance of recovering your money. I think I now have to agree with this. Also using your debit card as an additional protection is a wise move. Paypal is generally paid using direct debit so if you can’t get paypal to give your money back the bank may well do it for them.
Do not send money to advertisers on gumtree using bank transfer. Gumtree tells you not to do this in its site guidelines. More fool me for my cleverness!
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What a total wanker.100% the same bloke from worchester. I asked the next day on my wife’s account and he said he still had it for sale until I asked for his phone number then again it was sold.sorry to hear this mate.what a scum bag
Yeah, its pretty dark that people are out there purposely targeting other peoples goodwill in order to steal from them.
Robbing people on line is much safer than say, aggravated burglary, and carries next to no penalties. If you think about it like this you kind of wake up to the realities of on line fraud.
Gumtree are completely useless and are very unhelpful. Action fraud is a joke. Having looked into it I find it pretty alarming how easy it is to just rip people off with near impunity.
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These scams always seem a little bizarre to me. I can sort of understand the motivation/logic if it was a high value and in high demand item that you could con a number of people simultaneously and very quickly as a one off then attempt a runner but to run the risk over something that is only likely to attract one, maybe two, firm buyers at a time who will likely flag and chase via Paypal/credit card/etc seems bonkers.
Anyway, my rule of thumbs is to only buy via Paypal’s invoice/goods route for protection. I am happy to sell using F&F but have begun to hear stories of sellers getting stung incorrectly by dodgy claims. Probably just easier to set a price that includes the 3.4% protection fee to be honest.
Agree, if you were going to do something like this you’d go for the latest iphone, macbook, or something of the sort.
The shame of these kind of scams is that the ‘sellers’ actually know about the hardware and therefore are knowingly ripping off fellow producers and musicians. Total bullshit!
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I’m guessing from his gum tree ad he could have scammed about 5 or 6 people. I nearly fell for it but in the end I said I was gonna pick it up and then it was already sold.scumbag