Got this one this morning....
Dear Artist,
I wish to purchase at least 2 paintings /Prints / or any other form of arts for beautification of my house during this Christmas Season and i need your professional advise before i could make the purchase
Kindly e-mail me a Link to your website so that I can review some of the printsngs you have in stock or you can e-mail me some of your suggested works which may match my need.
Many Thanks
Simon
Replies
Simon, those scammers are everywhere. I tried to sell a few things on Craig's list this summer - an old refridgerator, a computer monitor, and I had a house for rent. I was hit by scammers for all three. They all had bad grammer because they are using the translator on google and things translate funny on them. That is the best clue to the email being a scam. They all were from a foriegn email, too. Why would someone contact me for an old refridgerator from England? The other common thing is they seem to want an assistant or some other person to get whatever they are buying. My neighbor has a little resturant and she has been hit by them there, too. They asked for 150 sandwiches and wanted her to send money with a courier. She was selling the food, she shouldn't be sending THEM money. Then, she got hit again with the same request. Certainly was sounding fishy.
The scammers must think we are stupid. If the grammer is bad or they are asking for art work but don't request a specific one that you are selling just ignore them. And always keep in mind that these scammers seem to be everywhere. They are contacting everyone they can find selling anything.
Jacki B
My high standards will not permit me to accept a potential customer who cannot use grammar and punctuation correctly, therefore I’m out. ;)
Even the scammers need to be creative. You know it's a scam when they use the generic "Dear Artist" instead of your real name. And, if this was legit, they would have googled you first to get your web site. The problem is that even if this was a real email, you wouldn't want to take the risk and email them back. There is another way to tell. If you hover your cursor over their email address, down at the bottom in the status bar, or somewhere depending on which email service you use, it will show where that email is coming from. Most scam emails come from one place, usually another country, and are routed through a legit looking email address, just to try and fool you. If the two are the same it is possible that it is real. If the two are different, which is almost 100% of the time, you know it is a scam.
I've actually gotten legitimate emails from people that saw my work online and were inquiring about making a purchase. They used my real first and last names and are specific and personal. You can just tell when you get an email from a real person.
DELETE button :-)