Fraudulent telescope ad on another website

[Adelastro1]

Hi everyone,

I was alerted today by an IIS member of a fraudulent ad on the Melbourne Gumtree website which lists my recently acquired telescope from this site for sale, at a much lower price! A member emailed me asking if it was for sale today. I replied to his email saying definitely not and also lodged a fraud ad notice with Gumtree but I just want to make it known to members on IIS that it is a fraud.

The wording in Gumtree has been copied from the ad that was in the IIS forum and one photo from that also of it sitting in the back yard of the guy I bought it from.

Please be careful buying items through the internet, especially from other sites. There have been many many sales through IIS which are completely above board and I have been a part of some with some great sellers, but please watch out for frauds like this. Ask for confirmation, ID or other security checks and proof of ownership any time you buy expensive items.

Thanks,
Wayne

[Octane]

Cheers for the heads up, Wayne.

Gumtree is an absolute cesspool. There's websites devoted to how much it sucks.

H

[rousey346]

it seems very common to be happening in within astronomy forums. Maybe because of the cost of high quality equipment, and preying on the fact that most amateur astronomers are rather trustworthy


I lost $2400 on cloudyskies.com to a man in Indonesia who had a false optics business apparently located in Seattle US when i agreed to purchase a LX200GPS telescope through him.

Once i made payment, i never heard from him again, and found the site is fraudulent


I still have not received my imaginary scope

Be very very careful