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Topic: DO NOT BUY GIFT CARDS! DON'T GET SCAMMED! WARNING WARNING! (Read 290 times)

legendary
Activity: 1792
Merit: 1283
Forum is mostly filled up with scammers so it fully depends on you whether you want to get scammed or not.
In terms of gift cards, they can be reversed which will not make escrow of any use so it is always better to stat far away from such deals.
I’ve seen some peoples selling various gift cards for a lot cheaper rate but once I contact them, they sprightly send their addresses for payment without any clarification. Gift card sellers cannot be trusted as we don’t even know from which source have the GC’s came.

Oh FFS, the forum is not mostly made up of scammers.
You know there are other parts to this forum than just the Services section, right?

The only reason why anyone gets scammed is because people let themselves be scammed.
Don't trade without escrow, is that such a hard rule to follow?

If people can cancel gift cards, just ask for escrow for the entire period during which gift cards can get cancelled.
Or go with a trusted seller that has hundreds of positive reviews.

Or maybe just stay away from gift cards entirely, in general, there's a good chance that they're obtained via fraud.

I just can't believe people are this stupid and that they always blame it on the forum or whatever.
legendary
Activity: 2100
Merit: 1058
I've used autobuy links before and never had a problem.  I just make sure the seller actually has good reputation and I don't purchase anything off some newcomer.  It makes it a lot easier for the seller because they don't always have to be online.
Yes, some of those auto escrow sites like bitify.com selly.gg, etc are been trusted but the seller on them needs to be trusted. We can’t even let our money into the escrow if we are not fully confirm about the seller or at least the seller should have some reputation.

Even I’ve used such sites for purchases of digital good but purchasing gift cards from such sources can be fatal as gift cards can be reversed. It is good to personally but gift card from official website rather than trusting any new seller over here.
hero member
Activity: 1148
Merit: 527
Forum is mostly filled up with scammers so it fully depends on you whether you want to get scammed or not.
In terms of gift cards, they can be reversed which will not make escrow of any use so it is always better to stat far away from such deals.
I’ve seen some peoples selling various gift cards for a lot cheaper rate but once I contact them, they sprightly send their addresses for payment without any clarification. Gift card sellers cannot be trusted as we don’t even know from which source have the GC’s came.
legendary
Activity: 3094
Merit: 1127
Mods are actually banning a scammer when they discover him but its absolutely impossible to stop it because they can open a new account everytime their account is banned. So, there are always going to exist scammers on every forum and its your business to be careful and make a quick search before buying from a newbie. Using an escrow is the most important rule when dealing with newbies so why the hack dont you guys respect it? Its only your fault that you get scammed since you have been warmed about it.

Even forum rules will change and banning every single one of them would still end up to be an endless story or job by admins/mods and creating a new account is easy.
Therefore, as a member of this community you should really be wary into those scammers and how they do perform their modus.We can actually see lots of them and getting rid of them
wont be possible as they would continue to exist as long there are noob minds who keeps believing and feeding them.
full member
Activity: 630
Merit: 172
I've used autobuy links before and never had a problem.  I just make sure the seller actually has good reputation and I don't purchase anything off some newcomer.  It makes it a lot easier for the seller because they don't always have to be online.
jr. member
Activity: 138
Merit: 5
Many sellers use autobuy sites for the seller's convenience; they just have to upload their product / license keys / gift card codes once and don't need to worry about manually keeping tabs on payments, shipping the product to the buyer and whatnot.

The issue is indeed that most of the autobuy sites do not have any Escrow, so buyers have no way of getting their funds back if they paid in crypto. That said, however, there is already an ideal solution available which ticks both the above boxes: coinmall.com

CoinMall is a marketplace, like Amazon, on which users can buy/sell virtual products for crypto. It's sort of like an autobuy site, but far more advanced:
  • Sellers can simply list their products for sale and have the product auto-delivered to their customers and payments processed for them.
  • Buyers can choose a reputable Escrow (such as Minerjones & Dabs, click here for complete list) whilst checking out, resulting in a safe shopping experience for the buyer with 0% risk of getting scammed

Going forward, your best bet as a buyer is requesting the seller to list his/her product on CoinMall, after which you can purchase it knowing there is no risk of getting scammed.
If the seller refuses to sell through CoinMall, then you know for certain it's a scam and you should steer away.
hero member
Activity: 1666
Merit: 753
Please do not get scammed. All the sellers here offering escrow for gift cards DO NOT offer escrow.

They tell you to buy using SELLY or SATOSHIBOX but the funds go directly to the seller.

WHY ARE MODS NOT BANNING THESE SELLERS?! If you give me the authority I'll ban every last one of them.

For some reason I can't even reply to most of their threads to warm people!

WATCH OUT!

This has been the exact message that we've been trying to spread here for years.

The fact is that is something is listed on an autobuy site it is pretty much as good as a scam - because of the fact that autobuy sites may seem like escrow sites, but in reality, they are nothing more than an interface for the buyers and sellers. You cannot dispute transactions like you could on actual ecommerce, or escrow sites.

Locked/self moderated threads should be a huge giveaway as well, along with the pricing of these gift cards. Think about it logically - who in the right minds would offer up such heavily discounted gift cards without either attempting to scam you, or providing fraudulently carded GCs?
legendary
Activity: 1624
Merit: 1130
Bitcoin FTW!
The suspiciously good rates that these sellers in the Digital Goods section claim to offer should be another very big red flag to you. Most of them seem to be offering a massive discount on popular giftcards like ones from Amazon and eBay and other popular ecommerce sites.

Unfortunately the scammers use Selly as a medium for payment so there's likely been many people reeled into such scams that don't own Bitcointalk accounts and so aren't aware about trust as non-members can't see trust ratings. Wish people were forced to view the pinned post EcuaMobi has in Digital Goods (linked by jhenfelipe already, but click for another link) on their first visit to that part of the site at the least.
hero member
Activity: 2632
Merit: 833
Thank you for giving the community a fair warning. I guess you got the answers as to why the mods are not banning these sellers. Luckily, those scammers are being tagged by forum members as well, all you have to do is to check their Trust Settings, to avoid those kind of low-life here in this community.
full member
Activity: 1092
Merit: 117
Mods are actually banning a scammer when they discover him but its absolutely impossible to stop it because they can open a new account everytime their account is banned. So, there are always going to exist scammers on every forum and its your business to be careful and make a quick search before buying from a newbie. Using an escrow is the most important rule when dealing with newbies so why the hack dont you guys respect it? Its only your fault that you get scammed since you have been warmed about it.
legendary
Activity: 2702
Merit: 4002
Do you think this is how a marketplace should operate?
of course not. But what is the *ideal* solution from your point of view, managers banning accounts? Let's discuss this in two ways:

 - Do managers ban possible Scam? "The accused is innocent until proven guilty"
 - Do managers ban real Scam? Scammers can create more accounts, creating accounts doesn’t cost anything.

An acceptable solution relies on *Trust system* to warn against potential scams.
If you have any ideas, feel free to shear it in this section ---> Meta.
newbie
Activity: 6
Merit: 1
WHY ARE MODS NOT BANNING THESE SELLERS?! If you give me the authority I'll ban every last one of them.
You have no logical reason to ban them, using Auto-Buy URLs sites is the most common way to scam, but it's up to you. you must inform the seller to provide trusted Auto-Buy URLs with trusted escrow or use Bitcointalk trusted member escrow "If s/he refuses, open a scam Accusations topic against that user."

Prevention is better than cure, if there are any doubts about the seller, do not let the high discount rate scam you by risking purchase from the user.

19. Possible (or real) scams and Trust ratings are not moderated (to prevent moderation abuse).

I have no logical reason? Every forum I've ever been on where there's a marketplace there's always mods filtering out the scammers, so no other forum is logical besides this one. Right. More like the mods rather write one thread saying how to prevent getting scammed than take the time to weed out all the scammers. For the record I didn't get scammed. I messaged at least 30 sellers and 29 of them were clear scammers. You think this is how a marketplace should operate?
legendary
Activity: 2702
Merit: 4002
WHY ARE MODS NOT BANNING THESE SELLERS?! If you give me the authority I'll ban every last one of them.
You have no logical reason to ban them, using Auto-Buy URLs sites is the most common way to scam, but it's up to you. you must inform the seller to provide trusted Auto-Buy URLs with trusted escrow or use Bitcointalk trusted member escrow "If s/he refuses, open a scam Accusations topic against that user."

Prevention is better than cure, if there are any doubts about the seller, do not let the high discount rate scam you by risking purchase from the user.

19. Possible (or real) scams and Trust ratings are not moderated (to prevent moderation abuse).
hero member
Activity: 1372
Merit: 647
First, you should read all the pinned posts here in the forum before using it. For Digital Goods, you should have read "Avoid auto-buy links, mainly locked or self moderated. Register before dealing".

Second, do a research about the seller and much better if you'll communicate here in the forum (not outside). Always demand an escrow (choose a trusted one) and if the seller don't want an escrow, don't deal with him.  

Third,  scam is not moderated here in the forum. Moderators will give negative trust to scammers if proven, but will not ban their account. They are letting people to do their research and decide whether to make a deal or not.

Be extra careful next time!
newbie
Activity: 6
Merit: 1
Everyone on this forum including staff is a scammer that's why none of them get banned.
Where's the proof?
newbie
Activity: 213
Merit: 0
Everyone on this forum including staff is a scammer that's why none of them get banned.
newbie
Activity: 6
Merit: 1
Please do not get scammed. All the sellers here offering escrow for gift cards DO NOT offer escrow.

They tell you to buy using SELLY or SATOSHIBOX but the funds go directly to the seller.

WHY ARE MODS NOT BANNING THESE SELLERS?! If you give me the authority I'll ban every last one of them.

For some reason I can't even reply to most of their threads to warm people!

WATCH OUT!
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