Reporting Adverts and Scams

We rely on our manxnet Classifieds readers to assist in reporting adverts which they suspect may be spamming the boards, scam adverts or posted with inappropriate content. You can report an advert to us by clicking on the report flag alongside the relevant advert when viewing it in list format.

Please refer to our Guidelines, image rules, Acceptable Use and Terms and Conditions for confirmation of what is acceptable.

We then review these reports on a daily basis and if we feel the advert is breaching the rules it may be that the advert is removed.

Scams

It has been brought to our attention that there are instances of fraudsters targeting customers who place adverts on the Manxnet Classifieds section.

Please bear in mind that if the person contacting you seems very keen to buy the item ,even without seeing it, or offers you more than what you wanted then it is probably too good to be true. 

Often the fraudsters contacting using free email accounts such as @gmail or @hotmail and the language used may seem a bit strange.

Some examples being:

"How are you doing today, i want to know if you still have the ads for sales, if yes Kindly get back to me with your last selling price and the present condition as well."

"Am interested about your item posted on for sale. email me it final price and last asking price today."

They will then ask for your contact details including address in order to pay via UK Bank Draft.  We then believe they would send a fake Bank Draft which as people may not be familiar with what these look like could catch people out. 

Another scam we have become aware of is as follows:

The vendors are contacted by email by the potential buyer. The buyer says they want the item for sale to be shipped to their country. They then add approximately £1000 to the sale price of the item for this purpose, and send a cheque to the vendor, who banks the cheque.

After allowing about four days for the cheque to clear, the buyer then contacts the vendor to arrange shipping. The vendor is quite willing to pay for this, in the mistaken belief that funds have already been provided for this purpose. The shipping fees are requested upfront. The vendor subsequently pays the shipping fees (a same day money transfer is always requested by the buyer). In due course, the vendor's bank notify him/her that the original cheque was stolen, and will not therefore be honoured.

The vendor has been defrauded out of the value of the shipping fees.

If you receive such an e-mail, and be aware that there will be variations on this theme, please ignore and DO NOT respond to them.

Any Isle of Man based users who suspect they have been a victim of criminal activity can contact the Financial Crime Unit at [email protected].