It isn’t easy trusting people due to the massive amount of fraud cases these day.
Brad* was one of the unlucky people who lost his hard earned money to a con artist. A Carouseller had ripped him off of his hard earned RM400 when he thought he was purchasing a handphone.
Brad tells World Of Buzz that the incident took place on February 17, 2017 just before midnight. The 21-year-old was scrolling through Carousell at home.
“I accidentally broke my phone. I’m a part-time Uber driver so I desperately needed a phone.
“My budget was roughly around RM400-600 as I’m looking for a middle spec second hand smartphone for temporary use only.
“Then, an ad showed up, an Oppo F1 plus selling at only RM550.”
Source: Phone Radar
Brad thought he hit the jackpot to have found such a good bargain, and so he messaged the seller to strike up a deal, but he felt a little suspicious about the low price.
“I asked her why did she sell it below the market price.”
According to his own research a second-hand phone of that model should cost about RM800.
“Then, she replied a rather logical answer saying she upgraded to a new phone and wanted urgent money.”
Initially, Brad wanted to do a Cash-On-Delivery (COD) exchange because it was a large amount of money and the good is expensive too.
However, the Carouseller said that she was from Terengganu which meant that she could only send the phone by postage. So Brad had to bank in the money of course.
“Even though I will receive the phone by postal delivery and not COD, I didn’t mind. Because I had a few experiences of buying goods by postage which went perfectly fine.”
“Then, I banked in RM400 to her and showed her the bank receipt. After a while, she replied me by saying that she is already in the post office waiting for her number and asked me to kindly wait for her postal slip.”
“I waited and waited and waited, and didn’t hear from her again.”
Brad decided to create a 2nd account to test whether he truly had been just scammed or not. He acted like an interested buyer and the seller actually replied!
Then, just to confirm his suspicions again, the young man created a 3rd account. This time, he stated that he was from Terengganu and insisted to do a cash-on-delivery transaction.
However, the seller did not reply anymore after that.
Realising that he has been conned by the horrible seller, Brad went to the police station to file a report. But the police could care less!
The so-called law enforcer said,
“Do you know how to write in Malay? Here, you write la. I will check it through later.”
Then the policeman went on to chit chat with his colleagues and do other things!
Finally, after he finished up with his report, the policeman referred Brad to another government sector for his case.
“After I made the report, he asked me to go to KPDNKK, the tribunal court for commercial cases. Not here, at the police station.”
“So I was thinking did I just wasted 2 hours of my time writing a karangan or what?”
But the worst part of this situation is, a lot of Malaysians are conned like this EVERYDAY.
“According to the policemen and the tribunal court, hundreds and thousands of cases like mine were reported daily in Malaysia.”
“There is not much that the victim could do because the bank account provided by the seller might be their relatives’ or friends’, and the online profiles could be fake.”
Now that there isn’t much else for Brad to do, he could only advise others from falling into the same trap as he did.
“I wish this incident of mine can create awareness to all the online consumers to be more cautious whenever you are purchasing anything that requires postal delivery and not COD.
“I am also hoping that platforms like Carousell could filter their sellers strictly to protect the buyers.
“And also, ask for more details from the sellers like their IC and address aside from just their bank accounts. This is to secure your hard earned money.”
Alas, the seller’s Carousell account has since been removed.
This goes to show how important it is to ensure the identity of who you’re making business transactions with, because you never know it could be a scam. If the deal is too good to be true, it usually is.
*Name has been changed to protect contributor’s identity
