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I will tell you what happens to me in this past months that lead me to lose $650, for what reason and what I have learned from this experience
When I was approaching the month of February, I started to prepare myself to buy a gift for my mother birthday. It was in March and I wanted to work extra hours to afford to buy her a good gift.
My mom uses an iPhone 4 since a long time and she even got it from someone. It was used and has a lot of issues, but since she doesn't use it for other than calling and texting at first, it wasn't an issue. late she started to use the internet like any other people around us, exploring what spreading on social media and helping herself with some question that she might have no answer for.
An accident happened to her 2016 that caused her vision to grow weak and barely read from a very close distance. Her glasses is a good help to her but I know that her small phone will only keep making her puts more pressure to view what she want.
From there I got the idea of buying her a big iPhone 6 or even 7 if I can instead if that one she had. I started looking all over sites trying to buy her an Unlocked one. I was at Amazon, and with my search there I was able to discover that there was a lot of scam accounts that associate with electronics products. Now you would ask, how did you know that? Well.... usually those accounts sell a product with a little less price than usual as well as telling you to contact them before purchasing. I did contact those emails been provided by them and the invoice they send to you to pay is a total scam. Especially when they tell you to pay with a gift card and send them the code or even when they ask for you card info. It's obvious that it's false invoice that could only make you end up losing your money.
Anyway, I went to eBay and found an Amazon Gift Card for a little less for it value and decided to buy it in case I would buy a phone from Amazon. I bought it before I discover those scamming accounts. After I knew about them, it was too late to cancel the purchase for Gift Card. So, I went with the flow and decided to sell it late after I get it.
After that, I went to Letgo app and started to search for phones there. Actually, it was a bad idea. My mom birthday was approaching, I had no time to go out and buy because I am busy with school and work. I found a girl (Supposed to be...), and I talked with her to get the phone. She was living a little away from me. So we decided to go with sending money with a GreenDote card that I have never used before. Anyway, it was a bad idea to go with. I did use that method thankfully I only put $150 on it as a first. After I send the card code in within minutes, my sense came back to me that she might be a scam. I went immediately and tried to ask if we could meet each other and she give me the phone and I give her the rest of the money. But she/he started to put excuses and etc and I knew that the money went at that moment. One of the reviews on her Letgo account said that she was actually he instead and that for sure is a scam. Well, my money is gone but I was thankful that I didn't send the entire money total.
I was angry but then I went easy on myself. I was at work when all that happened. My Coworker was making fun of the situation and my patience was in its limits. They helped me a little at that day, but next day, everyone knows and when I was trying to forget what happened, they kept bringing up the matter and laughing but I kept it cool somehow.
I learned that in this kind of apps, only meeting would be preferred. Ask for a meeting with the person you want to buy from, any excuses to sneak from this method then forget. I actually bought before with Paypal a product from that app that worth $700 and it get shipped to me from CA and there was nothing wrong. but I guess methods matters and nothing is guaranteed. But still, since the day I went to this app, a lot of scams came to me. Even they would send you invoices that shaped like Paypal or Amazon Marketplace or any other form to trick you. Because I did some comparison before to the actual companies emails I was able to tell that it was a scam.
Well, my story didn't end her yet. I know it was a long one. But remember I said I lost $650 and until now you can tell that I only lost $150. I would be continuing my story in the next post. I hope that you guys learn something from my story. And I would be happy to her your advice as well.
Thanks for reading :)