[skanchan95]

Originally Posted by sukarsan

Are there any genuine buyers in OLX at all?

There are genuine buyers on OLX but these days thanks to the Covid related mess, the number of scammers have increased on OLX exponentially. They wait for new ads to show up to seek their next prey.

In fact, back in April 2019, I was able to get a couple of genuine enquiries for my 2016 Figo on OLX. I ended up selling the car to one of them and the entire process was surprisingly and delightfully smooth as it was all through agreement based bank transactions. As usual, there were lowballers and suspected scamsters whom I ignored. 6-7 years ago, we were able to sell our old fridge and table to a buyer on OLX on cash payment basis. Gpay/UPI payment option didn't exist then and today's scams were not a common thing back then.

It is important to cancel the deal if the usual red flags are raised....insistence on Gpay, higher than expected price, urgent need etc as scammers are coming up with new ways to loot the gullible everyday.

[girishkamath]

This is what happened to me 2 days back.

My father in law, who lives in my hometown has a small 1BHK on thier first floor. They live in the ground floor. I put an ad on MagicBricks for rental. Its a small town, so the rental is 6.5K and advance we were asking was 20K. 99Acres scans other portals and they called me in the evening, saying that they can post the property in 99acres for free. I agreed and asked them to take all details from MagicBricks.

30 minutes after the ad was online, I get a call. The person on the other side says he is calling from Army Cantt in Bangalore and he is an Army jawan. He says, he and 40 of his unit members have been transfered to this small town and he is looking for a house for his family. I did not see anything wrong in it. He kept on repeating that if anyone from Army calls, tell them the house is gone. I said, fair enough but I can do that once you pay the advance. He asked me pics of the house on whatsapp, which I sent him after 10 minutes.

But after that it got me thinking. We have been in that town for decades and have not seen any Army unit deployed. I then called him to asked him his unit details. He said a name which I promptly googled and found nothing. That was Red flag-1. I again called him and said, I need his Army ID, Aadhar and PAN. He gave all the 3 along with few of personal photos in army uniforms.
I called a friend of mine, who is a retired Colonel and showed him the Army ID. He said it looks genuine. At this stage, most of things looked fine, except for the Unit name which I could not find on google.

He calls me in 5 minutes and says, his wife has okay'd the house, and he would like to give advance. He also said, as it is Army posting, government pays for 3 month advance and they directly pay the landlord. I was unaware of the process in the Army, so said Ok. He continues saying, there will be a Colonel who will call me, authenticate information before payment. I said, I am ok with that.
He asked me to send details where he needs to send money. I sent Bank account, Name, IFSC details. He says, he cannot pay to bank and prefers to pay using Google Pay. Government paying using Google Pay! Red Flag-2.

After a while, another gentleman calls and claims he is a Colonel. He says he is calling regarding the house retnal and would like to get details from me and pay the advance.
He says, I need to open Google Pay and he will guide me on how to "receive" money. Very nicely he says, open the option "New Payment" At that point, I recollected Jamtara. Red flag-100 !!! I told him - Is that not an option to Pay rather than Recieve. He firmly told me that, "new payment" is a way to receive the money and I will get 20K within seconds.

From that point, I started playing around with him. I said, I am not tech savvy and do not understand all the Google Pay and he should guide me. I was having fun with him for 10 minutes with all sorts of silly queries and telling him, I cannot see options he is talking about and all that. After a while, he got quite irritated and started raising his voice, at that time I told him - kisko c**** bana rahe ho yaar He prompty cut the call and immediately deleted all the messages and the photos he sent me on whatsapp!
I truly regret not recording that conversation.

All this happened within a gap of 30 minutes. I kind of believed in their story for the first 10-15 minutes.
Got me thinking - if I would have asked them to pay the money directly to my father in law, who late 60s and not tech savvy, he would have surely fallen for this and lost 20K!
These crooks are getting innovative and we just need to be extra cautious.

[iamitp]

If you are selling something on OLX and somebody offers you a Google Pay link for transferring the money - walk away. NEVER ENTER YOUR UPI PIN FOR RECEIVING MONEY.


I've reported multiple such scanners to OLX and Google Pay apart from lodging complaints with Delhi Policy and National Cyber crime cell. Don't see any action taken yet. Even YouTubers like Karl Rock have tried to highlight such scams but Indian law enforcement just doesn't seem to care about this middle class problem.

[subramaniamj]

Yeah - I also had a similar experience when I tried to sell my previous phone. Someone of a UK accent called me saying that he has been in Bangalore for the last few days and he was badly looking for a good phone at a low price and then he came across my ad.

He had been giving me no time to think, giving calls all around the day left and right. I got fed up with this and had a word with him saying that I don't have any obligations to sell you, so please respect my privacy. One day, I got an email saying that 10k has been transferred in my name, to a random account number with my name, email id, phone number mentioned, and everything else wrong. After this, he gave me a call and said that I've transferred the money, now give me my phone. His tone and everything got changed and was now threatening me.

I asked who gave you my personal details where as everything else is incorrect. He shared a screenshot from whatsapp, which was on first hand itself could be understood as fake, it had my photo, name and a chat with the aforesaid details shared to him as if I've shared it. When I asked a few questions, his accent got changed from UK to a very different one and he wasn't able to defend my questions, and he ran away

Please be careful, all!

[rajesh1868]

I had listed couple of items last March in Olx. I started getting response within 5 minutes of listing from about 4 people. Olx later blocked them as suspicious. I too did not get excited and did not respond as I suspected fraud. But the speed in which I got the response, I suspect bots in action.

[PVS]

If you want to test your ability in NOT getting scammed, post a "FOR-SALE" ad in OLX, sit back and enjoy the fun.
It happened with me, when I wanted to put up for sale, my old steel wheels(4) of the WAGON R VXi 2012. I had put in an asking price.

Around half a day had passed since I put up the ad, when I get a message on OLX chat, if the steel wheels are still on sale. I reply in the affirmative. The guy replies that he is interested in purchasing the steel wheels(he does not bargain at all - RED FLAG 1). I get slightly suspicious, however decided to play along.
He then asks me my number and tells me to take the listing away from OLX immediately RED - FLAG - 2. Its my call whether to de-list an item, and I need not follow the instructions of the seller.

He then starts chatting with me on whatsapp, and asks me the location of my place, and I share it with him. He tells me that he will send someone over to my place to pick up the steel wheels. So far so good.

He then asks me to utilize GPAY as the mode of payment and sends across a QR code that I have to scan, via WhatsApp. RED FLAG - 3. A QR code is very suspicious, and i immediately check online on OLX scams, and find out that many a seller had been duped, by scanning a QR code.

By this time, the seller calls me up and asks whether I was able to scan the QR code, and I was ready with my plan of action. I told him that all my banks have been acting really messed up, thanks to the mergers (Andhra Bank with Union Bank), Syndicate bank with Canara bank and so on and so forth) and that I was tired with the banks and let us do a spot cash transfer. The guy wasn't expecting this change in tack and kept insisting me to proceed via GPAY. I stuck my ground and told him to send his staff over, the staff can examine the steel wheels, and we can do a cash transaction on the spot and close the matter. He knew his game was up, and declined the cash transaction, so I to politely declined to proceed further and hung up the call. By late evening I get a message from OLX that the person I was dealing with looked suspicious, and his profile was deactivated from OLX.

So folks, be on your guard - OLX might have genuine buyers, but scam artists abound in plenty too, so never ever scan a QR code if you are asked to do so.

[SRM]

I do sell quite a few items on OLX. My modus operandi is simple with potential scammers:

Potential scammer: I want to buy at this price (normally a very good price, without even asking a lot about the product)

My reply: I take Only cash

End of conversation 9 out of 10 times

If someone says cash is fine, then I go ahead with the conversation.

[ninjatalli]

Originally Posted by rajesh1868

I had listed couple of items last March in Olx. I started getting response within 5 minutes of listing from about 4 people.

Originally Posted by PVS

If you want to test your ability in NOT getting scammed, post a "FOR-SALE" ad in OLX, sit back and enjoy the fun.

Hmmm - I wonder if these scammers target specific products/categories only. Have put up a (fake) ad for my watch a short while ago; haven't yet received any messages. Original pic(s), very high price so atleast genuinely interested folks would not touch it from a mile. Maybe they are taking a break...

[abtyagi]

Olx is full of scammers. Though simplest way to cut it by checking how old the account is. Most Spam messages you get will be from an account created recently. Earlier it also helped by looking at profile as in pictures name location etc. but they learned the trick. They create the accounts with recognisable names and a picture of family or father and kid(s) probably taken off Facebook. So yes, just check how old the account is.

[Everlearner]

I had a funny incident. One guy called up and told me he is from ATM card department (without any bank name) and that my debit card has been deactivated, nd he can activate it for me. I just asked him from which bank he is calling. He had the audacity to ask me which bank I have an account in
I again repeated my question and this time he told me ICICI. I told him I don't have an account with ICICI, and then he again asks me to tell him which bank I have my account with

On the other hand, a friend of mine has lost 40k to a scamster when she posted an ad on OLX to sell her excercise bike. A guy called up, agreed on price and sent her a UPI collection request QR code and she ended up losing money.

[SS80]

This would be rather a funny incident. I saw a TPlink AC1200 router on OLX. I texted the guy and he was okay to sell it for a pretty low price. Since we are in lockdown, I offered to google pay him and send a courier guy to collect it.

The minute I said Google pay, he sort of changed his tone and said "cash or Paytm only". He must have thought this is some scam. I asked him for a working condition video on whatsapp, he did post it.

I offered to pay him only when the courier (wefast courier service, as Dunzo does not serve that area), he agreed to that too. I paid him and he took a good 20mins to get down from his flat and handover the item. I received the item in the next 30mins and all went well.

The guy calls me to say, he was very skeptical of the deal as he thought this was a scam till he received the funds.

[bongSENse]

After reading many of the experiences in this thread, it's fairly easy to figure out that Google Pay is the most-exploited artillery used by scammers. I can understand the lackadaisical attitude of cyber cells and the lethargy of government officials in busting such rackets, but question is, does Google or other UPI providers not know of this? Are they not aware of the fact that their application is being misused by scammers to dupe people of their money? Being a techno-behemoth, I find it difficult to ingest that they don't otherwise - morally and ethically, should they not stand up to counter such maleficent actions? Probably, I'm asking too much here, but it is too difficult for their product team to add an extra validation/warning message on the app interface whenever someone tries to request for funds - instead of having a normal screen (akin to paying money), add flashes/vibrations/on-screen alerts to make the individual cognizant of his imminent action (of sending money)? This might immensely help in warding off unsuspecting folks who are at the verge of falling prey to a scam.

I don't want to be radical and ask for a scrappage of the 'Request Money' feature, although it never made a compelling use case to me - one can always call up and ask for the money to be sent if one is owed. I find it peculiar that the company which probably has the largest collection of user data (by virtue of their search engine) has not been able to crack this despite having an abundance of such complains on the internet!

[Everlearner]

Originally Posted by bongSENse

After reading many of the experiences in this thread, it's fairly easy to figure out that Google Pay is the most-exploited artillery used by scammers.
====
I find it peculiar that the company which probably has the largest collection of user data (by virtue of their search engine) has not been able to crack this despite having an abundance of such complains on the internet!

Thats true. The collect money feature is exploited in most cases which itself does not have a very convincing use case. That said, Google pay started displaying a warning message. In the screen where you enter the UPI pin, there will be a message that you are transferring the money and not receiving. It's easy to miss this message when in a hurry and they should make it more in your face so that people take notice before entering the pin.

[Petroleus]

Originally Posted by sameer sultan

I received a whatsapp message from a US number. This was a straight red flag for me.

Quite similar to Sameer Sultan's experience, An American wanted to gift his adopted son in Bangalore an electric Guitar I posted on OLX. Okkkaayy…I had a sense where this was headed, but played along to see what I could learn.
Chap didn't haggle on the price. After the usual banter for pictures and video that its in working condition, fragile packaging for Courier, etc....He said he will pay via G Pay. I told him I will take cash only. He tried to push back saying he doesn't know anybody locally here, blah blah... Need to pay cash dulled his interest. I finally sold it to a guy who came from Pune physically and paid me in cash.

May I quote Brad Pitt from Inglorious Basterds "it behooves oneself to keep his wits. Long story short, we hear a story too good to be true... it ain't."

[sameer sultan]

Update

I would like to show my gratitude to all those who have left a 'Thanks' to my post #79 in this thread about the fraud attempt via OLX which I tackled successfully.

I was indeed able to sell my wrist watch through OLX itself!!

Another user got in touch with me he negotiated the price and informed that he will visit once the lockdown is relaxed. He came over inspected the watch paid 50/50:Gpay/Cash and sealed the deal.

I would like to mention again that OLX is a very good platform for online selling/buying if we do due diligence as it connects to direct users. There are many suspicious users in the platform but at the same time genuine buyers far out number the not so genuine ones!