Shipping to someone's shipper overseas

Recently received an email telling me that someone in australia wanted to purchase my work in quantity.

this is what i got, i would like some opinions from anyone.   I have heard these email's are not to be trusted  

How are you doing today! I'm very much interested in purchasing some of
>> your products but firstly i want to make an inquiry if you can ship
>> directly to us here in Australia
>>
>> 1. Do you accept credit card   Yes / No   ( Answer )
>> 2. What type of card do you accept ?
>> 3. Do you ship to Australia  Yes / No  ( Answer )
>> 4) Can you work hand in hand with my freight forwarder personal shipping
>> agent? so they can Pickup the products directly from your location down
>> to
>> us here in the Australia Yes / No   ( Answer )
>>
>> I will await your reply

      General Manager
>> SR PTY LIMITED
>> 90 Hay Street Perth
>> WA 6000 Australia

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  • Once I started telling them in a return email that I can have it (my photography) printed in their country thereby saving them the cost of shipping, etc. I never got a return email, imagine that!

  • Copy a sentence of that message, then put it into Google search to see if the same or nearly the same has been sent to others.  Also, don't give or send art to anyone who hasn't sent money that has been accepted by your bank.

  • I had a refrigerator sale for $100 on Craig's list.  I had a scammer contact me to use a second hand person to buy the fridge for them.  I just said no way.  Then, I listed our rental house on Craig's list.  I got some guy who claimed he lived in England and was going to move to my town.  I wondered how this scam would play out.  I figured it was a scam because at the time there were not a lot of high paying jobs in our little town.  Nobody is coming here from England to work.  Then, he never asked me one question about the house.  Nothing.  Nobody would move here and not ask one question about the house they were going to live in.  Of course, a courier was going to be involved.  So my sister sent him an email telling him he could rent her house(she was just messing with him)  She got the same emails from him.  They must think we are all dumb.  If you ever wonder if the person is a scammer have a friend email them back as if they were the ones contacted in the first place.  If they don't wonder what is up, they are a scammer.  They should not be contacting you for a painting then, your friend tells them they can buy her sculpture.  A legit person should not play along with that.  A legit person should be saying hey, I don't want sculpture, I want a painting. 

  • If you pay for shipping with their shipper, they keep the money and never ship it.

  • Yes, scam.  Here's another way to check, though.  Copy part of the wording of the message and enter it in Google's search box.  These people send out hundreds or thousands of identical messages to artists (or others who sell things online).  Some of those artists post the message online, either asking if others received it and if it's a scam or reporting it as a scam.  So a message exactly like yours or one nearly identical will have been reported to scamwarners or the like.  In your case, there's a nearly identical one from someone supposedly in Greece.

  • Scam. We get these emails all the time on all our websites emails. They are bulk sent out and the wording in product is always general.
  • As others have said (and you surmised) this was surely a scam. But I had a slightly similar situation that was ligit. The person contacted me through Etsy. She lived in South Africa, but wanted me to ship to a shipping agent in Florida. Apparently, she did a lot of online shopping from US companies. It was cheaper to have things shipped to Florida, where they were held for up to a month and then shipped en masse to her address in South Africa, than to pay for overseas shipping for each purchase.

    I was a little leary, as it was different than I'd encountered before. But there was no risk to me. This was a normal Etsy credit card transaction (for a single item) with some specific requirements for carefully labeling the package, packing in a clear plastic bag before boxing it up, and including a thorough packing slip.

    Always be skeptical, but don't write them off just because you hear "overseas" and "shipping agent".
  • I kind of like getting these if I am not too busy. No one needs to show up for your artwork - actually they just want the check exchange. Knowing this was a scam I got one guy to actually send a check - in this case from his "investment account".  The check was for $6,500 but they sent it FedEx - I was hoping that they would use the US postal service because then you might get them for mail fraud. I never bothered with the check and no one ever called back :) 

    On another occasion they wanted a phone number to call me.  I told them to call me at work and gave them the phone number for the FBI in Atlanta.  The moron then called me at the number on my website saying that I must have given him the wrong number (he called from an overseas number - country code Nigeria, no surprise there).   That call was a hoot.  In his earlier email he said he was in Texas but relocating overseas, yada, yada, yada.  I jerked him around to run up his phone bill.  In the process I told him that I will be glad to use his shipper but I insist on packaging myself and only use Airfloat strongboxes to ship.  I gave him the item numbers for the boxes for his purchases and the website for Airfloat.  I told him to purchase the boxes and have them shipped to me.  Boxes never came - darn;  I was hoping they would send the boxes and the fraudulent check.  I can always use the boxes and they are not cheap!

    If you have the time and want to have some fun - use these jerks for cheap entertainment.

    I am pretty busy now but somehow I am going to figure out how to send one of those overseas business deals or lottery winning deals over to an art scammer and wonder if one scammed the other.  Meanwhile, have a laugh; sanity is over rated anyway!

  • thanks jacki, i finally know what it is about. when someone contacts me about type of cc and how to ship, my standard answer is i only ship thru the post office and i use paypal. then i never hear from them again. but now i know how the scam works

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