Buyer Beware

Yup …. The expanding cohort of bottom-feeding scum bucket scammers will continue to walk among us, and creating a collective kryptonite in our various audio forum listing bulletin boards.

But there are a couple of time-honoured very simple homilies to weed them and call them out:

1) New member / no feedback / no forum posts / no experience on the forum = no confidence and NO BUY or NO SELL.

2) In God we trust, everyone else pays cash!

3) if it sounds too good to be true, it is!

And there’s an easy step that AGON can elect to implement to effectively weed out the scammer UPFRONT: charge them say, a $250 upfront refundable deposit to their credit card for a notional period until the transaction satisfactorily clears with positive feedback On both sides.Scammers won’t be able to hide behind forum aliases nor BS identities or BS addresses,

Watching/Warning a friend to be careful on a sell situation. There is a recently new member trying to buy a pair of speakers from a colleague. The buyer has a new account, no feedback, no posts, no purchases, no history. Instructions are to "drop off the speakers at their local UPS with a UPS account that will pay for it all" and instead of using PayPal or Zelle instant payment, buyer is sending a check. Name/Address on the check, over $500 is federal offense if fraudulent, right? My buddy said he will wait for the check to clear before sending the speakers. Buddy feels its legit, yet still cautious for him. Trying to figure out if it can still come back on him after the check supposedly clears. i.e. like initial clear, but not fully clear through (all) bank back end clearing-houses. Perhaps I’m overthinking it for him. Scammers are getting to be more sophisticated to scam you.

Yes, your bank can reverse charges on a check many weeks after you think it has cleared.  I’m not aware of any time limit.

Beware that several weeks after a bank initially clears a check it still can bounce. A friend had this happen last year and lost $2500. Get a phone number and speak to buyer. Wait 3 weeks after bank clears check.

Never use checks. PayPal.