What should I know before buying parts from UK?

[billwagnon]

Is MoneyGram (at the seller's request) an acceptable way to send money to purchase parts from England to U.S.?

I am assuming I should use a credit card through MoneyGram.

[sc_rufctr]

Is Paypal an option? Not sure about MoneyGram or how it works.

[billwagnon]

Seller says his PayPal is currently 'dormant'. Which may mean it was closed for some reason.

[sc_rufctr]

What?... Do you have to deal with him?

[recycled sixtie]

Okay I would be paranoid. If somebody is selling something they should be happy that they are receiving $$$/pounds in any form that I am familiar with. I have no idea about Moneygram. I have mailed money orders to the UK and that is a successful way for me. Just call me a Luddite when it comes to this kind of thing that I am not familiar with.

I am on a constant alert for scammers.....

[rouxroux]

I just hope that these parts are not in boxes bearing the name "Lucas".

[widebody911]

Something smells fishy

[jriera]

Walk away ...

[StevoRocket]

web advice

Paying with moneygram or western union can be a problem .
This is an extract from the Ebay website ......What to avoid *

Paying with instant money transfer services such as Western Union and MoneyGram that send cash instantly from storefront locations, by telephone and over the Internet. If your seller insists on using only these payment options, report it to us as these are banned on eBay.


Be warned you can easyily get ripped off and theres no comeback ....

Offer to pay by paypal , cheque or bacs instead if they wont accept it ask why .If in any doubt walk away ......
Source(s):
Experience , the hard way ....

[dtw]

There are several threads in the classifieds about this - it is absolutely a scam. Bail immediately.

[petrolhead611]

In the UK , Moneygram and Western Union appear to be mainly used by migrant workers to send money to their folks back home. Everyone else pays for mail orders via Debitcard, Creditcard, or increasingly via bank transfers, or via Paypal or Worldpay. If this guy is genuine, he should be able to get his troublesome Paypal account back up & running in a matter of just a few days; if he can't do that the whole thing stinks.

[strath44]

+1 on above I would say if it isn't a business that takes the major debit or credit cards then the most private individuals really only deal with paypal IMO.

There are a few scammers about and they can pray on parts buyers, I recently reported a scam with someone selling Fuchs which I couldn't quite believe as they are fairly niche!

If you want to PM me I can can check out the details!

ps paypal doesn't really become "dormant" I'm not sure about in the US but in the UK over certain amounts of transactions / account use you have to eventually verify your account for all the usual reasons, its easy to do and pretty quick. The only reason someone wouldn't be happy about doing that is that they don't want it officially linked or verified which isn't good.

[john walker's workshop]

i thought everyone knew about scams and moneygrams by now. the UK is rampant with scammers. probably by way of nigeria.