How NOT to be scammed and how to distinguish a scammer! Philippines

For the past years that Sulit.com.ph has been online, we have seen many scammers who join our community and post advertisements trying to scam our members and visitors. We ban scammers when we identify them but banning scammers and deleting scam advertisements are only part of the fight against scam. Proper information dissemination is another and it is the purpose of this topic.

There are 4 major types of scams that we observe:

1. Gadget scams - selling gadgets like TVs, games consoles and cellphones in very low price. They even sell items that are not yet available in the market.
2. Pet scams - posting pets for adoption and asking the victim to only pay for the shipping fee. Free pets in short (but the shipping fee is not)
3. Lending scams - they lend money to anyone with very fast processing
4. Buying scam wherein the scammer will post a message to an existing advertisement that they have a son or daughter residing in another country and they wanted to buy your item. They even post their scam message to those "Wanted to Buy" advertisements showing that they do not even try to read and understand what the advertisement is about.

So how can you distinguish a scam advertisement:

1. If the price of the item is too good to be true, then we suggest that you be cautious and exert more effort to research about the advertisement and the advertisement owner if you intend to proceed with any transaction.
2. If the transaction will be done online (i.e. buyer pays and then seller ships the item without meeting each other) and the seller is willing that you pay 50% of the item first and then pay the remaining after you receive the item.  NO real seller will agree to these terms.
   
3. If a company name is posted in the advertisement, search for that company in Google. If the company really exists, more or less you can get some information about it in the internet. But be careful and be more resourceful as some scammers use the name of existing companies. If you find the company website, check if the advertisement posted is part of their product lists or services. And to be sure, contact the company using the contact information posted.
4. If the advertisement owner is asking you to pay using payment schemes without tracking.
5. Take note that fake cashier checks and money orders are common so be careful with transactions involving them.
6. Inquiry from someone who is from another country and the cost of shipping the item is ridiculous if you compare it with the price of the item.
   
7. Inability or refusal to meet in person even it is feasible according to the location of the transacting parties.

99% of the time, you can avoid being scammed if you can DEAL LOCALLY WITH MEMBERS YOU CAN MEET IN PERSON!


If you wanted to report a scam incident to us, please do not reply to this topic as it is difficult to track reports if everything is posted under 1 topic.  Please use our Help Center instead.

If you wanted the public to know about your experiece, please post a new topic under Spams and Scams category