Sonya Bateson: Scammers make online platforms a pain for bargain hunters

Scammers can be near-on impossible to trace and many potential buyers would rather just eat the loss than go through the hassle of trying to get their money back, writes Sonya Bateson. Photo / 123rf

OPINION

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.

And just like that I’m awake. I hit the big button on top of the clock radio to shut the darn thing up, give a yawn and a stretch, then drag myself out of bed and don my winter woollies. I can hear my mother boiling the jug on the other side of the house.

Thank goodness. We’re going to need caffeine at 5.30am on a chilly Saturday morning.

Travel mugs in hand, we grab the newspaper and a pen and climb into the car, hoping the heater will kick in soon.

As the front-seat passenger, it’s my job to navigate. I open the paper to the back section and find the page with the circled ads.

“Okay Mum, we’re going to the other side of town first. It says the garage sale starts at 6, so we’ll get there 10 minutes early.”

We find a park and join the other rugged-up people standing on the footpath outside the house. We recognise a few regulars and wave a greeting. Then we hear it, the noise we’ve all been waiting for. The unmistakeable sound of a tilt garage door scraping on concrete and lifting into the air.

Just like Aladdin approaching the fabled cave of wonders, we are bathed in light as we see table after table of treasures awaiting our eager examination.

In we all rush, hoping to beat the others to the best prizes, ready to barter and beg for a bargain.

54386874 - vintage rummage junk pile storage area mess.

Garage saleing was always a fun way to spend a Saturday morning with my mum. We’d go to as many sales as we could then when we were worn out (or our money had all been spent) we’d go home and marvel over our prizes.

Op shoppers will be able to relate – finding something special among stacks of junk is a real thrill. It’s even more so when you’re racing around a town trying to guess where the good spots are before the other hunters beat you there.

Unfortunately, garage sales are something I don’t see a lot of these days. Every now and then I’ll catch a glimpse of a handwritten sign tied to a lamp post, but they certainly seem to be few and far between, at least compared to the fun of 20-odd years ago.

I expect that has something to do with the proliferation of online marketplaces like Trade Me and Facebook Marketplace. Understandable, really.

Setting up a garage sale can be a lot of work and, in an age when we’re spending more of our lives on our phones and tablets it seems only natural that we would conduct our second-hand buying and selling online too.

But, speaking from experience here, those platforms can be a real pain in the backside.

Ask anyone who uses these sites with any regularity and I bet they’ll have a tale or three to tell.

There’s the items that look nothing like their description.

Sometimes scammers are obvious – a new or incomplete profile, photos that look straight off a Google search, unbelievably low prices, or won’t allow pick-ups to name a few, writes Sonya Bateson. Photo / 123rf

There’s the buyers who ask a million questions, arrange a time for payment and collection, then never show up.

There’s the people who compose a sob story hoping you’ll give away your item – and deliver it too, while you’re at it.

And there’s the scammers. So many scammers.

Sometimes they’re obvious – a new or incomplete profile, photos that look straight off a Google search, unbelievably low prices, or won’t allow pick-ups to name a few.

Other times, unfortunately, they’re darn clever and can fool the best of us.

What’s more, scammers can be near-on impossible to trace and many potential buyers would rather just eat the loss than go through the hassle of trying to get their money back.

So, what can be done about it? If you ask the selling platforms, they’ll give you a raft of advice on how to identify a scammer and on lower-risk ways you can pay for goods.

Useful advice, I suppose. But what really gets me is that this kind of advice puts the onus on the users themselves to avoid being duped. I mean, yeah, we should always be wary of people trying to rob us. Of course.

But I also believe the tech companies themselves should incorporate more stringent measures than currently exist to deter scammers from using their platforms in the first place.

Perhaps they could always require proof of address and a valid identification for a person to create a buying or selling account, for example.

I don’t know what would work best, I’m no tech expert. I am a stereotypical Millennial, though, and as such I have been the go-to person to help many, many friends and family set up their online accounts and am therefore well aware of how easy they are to obtain – and how easy they’d be to fake.

It’s enough to make me long for the good old days of garage sales when the only scams we had to worry about were lies about an item’s condition.

At least then I’d know exactly which front lawn to angrily dump a broken toaster upon.

Sonya Bateson is a writer, reader and crafter raising her family in Tauranga. She is a Millennial who enjoys eating avocado on toast, drinking lattes and defying stereotypes. As a sceptic, she reserves the right to change her mind when presented with new evidence.