The problems of advertising & the threat of scams.

The big question: How do you effectively advertise a bike and make contact details available to real bikers who are serious about buying, while at the same time preventing scammers from having access to that same information?

Answer: With difficulty. In fact - you can't. A good analogy would be car alarms. Car alarms, immobilisers, trackers etc. are all pretty good, and they probably save a lot of cars from being stolen - but cars still get stolen.

Scam adverts and scam enquiries to adverts are a big problem, and one that we take extremely seriously. You can't beat them 100% - nobody can, but what we can do is to educate and prepare our users so that if they encounter a scam, here or anywhere else, they'll be able to spot it straight away.

How can we do this?

Here at Bike-Exchange, we do absolutely all we can to minimise the chance of scam adverts appearing on the site in the first place. 

Every advert we show is read through by a member of our experienced staff and discarded if found to be suspicious.

Q. What's suspicious?
A. A bike that seems too good to be true - i.e. it's very new, in mint condition and about a quarter of the price it should be.

Now, these ones are easy to spot, and stick out like a sore thumb. Scammers, being naturally greedy, judge everyone by their own low standards and will try and tempt otherwise sane people to send money through the post because the offer seems too good to miss and you have to act quickly to get it - right? - WRONG. There is no such bike - forget it.
The more difficult scams are ones that don't appear unduly suspicious and on the face of it are quite reasonable buys. This is where we have to be careful.

Email security: We keep advertiser's email addresses safely hidden and don't publish them. We only allow access to email addresses to people who have paid a small amount to PayPal - who have stringent security measures to make sure that their members are 'Verified'. If a verified member of PayPal buys a service from us, and then anytime in the future leaves an advert, the Verified Member logo appears with their advert.

Advertiser education: All advertisers get a confirmation email when we accept and start displaying their advert. The email also contains scam warnings and resources we provide for free to ensure that they can be 100% sure of any responses they get from our site.

We offer scam checking resources. A valid reply to an advert on Bike-Exchange will contain a known message in the email subject. If it's not there - be suspicious. 

You can check the email address of the interested party on our scam check form here. If they are emailing you, then they must be a valid member to have access to emails, and we'll have a record of them. If we don't, then they're not verified and they've got your address some other way - maybe from another site that you advertised on.

Buyer education: Again, by using our scam email address check, a buyer can check an address to see how many other times this individual has made others suspicious enough to check their address. Checks are logged, and repeat checks on an address will indicate that caution should be used - or put another way, don't touch this person with a barge pole.

Action: We remove any advert that causes any of our users to be suspicious. The advertiser's email address is added to our scam email check list and we add it to our list of banned advertisers to prevent further advertising. 

Financial and personal information: We don't collect or store any personal or financial information, even if you pay for a lookup account. PayPal doesn't share any of your information with anyone (and neither should you - see PayPal below). Please read our privacy policy and disclaimer here.

Other web sites: Please be extremely wary of other web sites that publish your email address. You should edit it as soon as possible to remove you details. 

PayPal: Please also be aware if you use PayPal that they, and no other financial institute will EVER ask you to 'confirm' your highly sensitive security details relating to your account by email - no more than they'd ask you to stand in the middle of a football pitch and announce it by mega phone. These email messages are all scams - no matter how convincing they look - or how much they try and convince you that your account will be closed down if you don't 'act immediately'.

There are some scam examples below - please take a quick look at them - there's some further information before them which highlights the key components of the classic scam.

If everyone ignores them, they will go away!!

They will have several key components which make them very obvious:

Africa
Cashiers cheque
'I will like'
Successful business man
'I will like to know the present condition..., the last price...'
Bad spelling
Bad grammar
They want to buy without even seeing
They are buying for someone else
arrange shipping
They offer you more than you're asking, and they want the bike and the difference in money
Someone who owes them money will buy it off you

The best advice is to delete the response - don't reply to it. You shouldn't get any of these scams by advertising on Bike-Exchange.com. If you think you have got one through advertising with us, please let us know immediately so we can take the appropriate action.

Thanks,

Bike-Exchange.com

For Your Information: Example scam emails:

hi,

I am ken white,i'm interested in buying Yamaha MOTO 4,that goes for 
£675 but right now i am in CANADA to buy some goods for my company in 
SPAIN .
I will like to know the present condition and also
like to know if you will accept banks cashier cheque.
hope to hear from you soon.
Thanks

Good Day,
my name is raymon,i am located in west africa, i am highly interested in buying your advertised bike, please let me know if you can
ship to west africa if not i will arrange with one of my client shipping agency and i will like to know the final offering price and the
recent pics for the bike,and i will also like you to provide me with the present condition of the bike listed.please let me hear from you
as soon as possible so as to make this transaction very fast and my mode of payment is a cashier's check drawn in uk bank.so
please if that is okay by you, let me hear from you soon.
Thanks

Thanks a lot for your response.I am still very much interested in your bike
.I'm willing to pay £920 for the bike .I'm presently located in Holland but
not to worry everything will go on well.As regards the shipping I contact a
shipping company they will be contacting you as soon as you have the
payment,you are to send the balance so they can be on ground to pick up the
bike as soon as we seal this transaction.As regards the payment,there is a
client of mine in the UK that is owing me £5,500.00 pounds I would instruct
him to make out a cashiers check to you although the money is more than the
value of the bike but i am willing to trust you with the money.As soon as
you have payment you can send the remaining balance to the shipping agent
via western union money transfer.
The reason why i am doing this is because it would take a least 30 days for
a money sent from over here to clear whereas it would only take between 2-3
days for a money sent within the UK to clear.And this is the fastest way for
me to send money to you now. If my terms is acceptable to you,please mail me
the following informations so that i can instruct my client to send the
money to you as soon as possible.The name of the recipient of the
check,address and cell and land phone number. Thanks in anticipation.
Sean