I am selling something fairly valuable on Leboncoin … any scams I should watch out for, how to avoid, what to do if …?
If you are selling, then not as many as if you were buying.
Do not be coaxed to go ‘off piste’ - stay in the Leboncoin platform and do not take payment outside of their secure pay. Then ther is the time wasting - plenty of that. And beware of the chap who offers you more than you are asking…
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Only use the LBC payment or something like paypal. Never any weird my mate will collect with a voucher or Offers of DHL prepaid delivery.
Just be suspicious
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A nasty one I heard about from an antique dealer friend. Buyers paid and items were delivered, Buyer was then telling eBay the item was wrong, or inaccurately described, or fake, and requesting a refund for returning. What turns up returned to the seller would then not be the original item at all but a much lesser value generic or out and out fake.
I advise the OP take many detailed and macro photos, to be available for buyers to see on the sales platform. This creates a record clearly identifying the original item.
The second thing I would advise, as the item is valuable, after advance payment has been banked, to arrange a personal pick-up by the buyer at a neutral public place. Preferably a location with CCTV, like a hotel lobby.
I hope your item is portable!
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Susannah, I heard from my brother some years ago of a buyer complaining that the camera bro had sold was faulty. It certainly wasn’t, but it took bro quite some time and angst to sort things out.
Sadly there is very, very little that a seller can do to protect themselves against this accusation on any online platform but especially eBay.
All the photos you like do not prove that the original, valuable, item was sent, nor that the cheap knock off was returned.
In fact unscrupulous sellers can make use of this trick - I wanted to buy a Wii 2 as we like a lot of the Wii games for a bit of harmless fun, but the supposed “as new”, working one I bought turned up damaged and not working - the seller agreed to a return but then claimed I had sent him back a dud which was not the one he sent me and refused the refund.
To add to the aggravation eBay basically said (when I disputed the case) “well, you can have your refund but we think you are defrauding the seller - we just can’t prove it”.
I’ve never been as keen on eBay as a result unless there is no option or the item is cheap enough I can write it off if it is a dud.
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Have someone with you when you make the sale. My family would not let me sell on my own, always had them or a neighbour on hand. My son in law goes to a neutral place like an open carpark to buy bits in the US so the seller dosn’t know where he lives and someone goes with him and stays in the car.
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I sold an item in perfectly good order which the buyer then claimed to be defective and he requested a refund.
I ignored him and never heard from him again.
I would respectfully submit that you were lucky.
I’m happy to accept that I was lucky. I did expect to hear further but when there was no follow up I assumed that he had in all likelihood just been trying it on.
One assumes so.
Just that those who do rarely give up with so little a fight (IME, of course).
Though I did one have someone try to return a laptop lid and LCD I sold, and with a sob story, until I pointed out the listing showed very clearly the LCD itself was toast and I was selling the lid solely for the working backlight.
Personally, as a French person, I would only meet in person, never would do distance. Le bon coin or facebook marketplace. And get them to pay cash if at all possible. If it’s some electrical I even find a place to plug it in so I can test it, so consider options for your buyer to test if needed.
As a buyer, people seemingly honest, won’t tell you a fault you find out later on. Try and be as honest as possible yourself to reassure your buyer so they pay cash.
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I recently advertised a car on leboncoin. One scam artist I discovered was someone whose user name was a random sequence of letters (eg.oiuytrezdfiregttyut) : Their standard spiel was “Bonjour, votre annonce [car name and price] est toujours disponible à la vente ? Pourriez-vous m’envoyer des photos supplémentaires ? SVP uniquement à mon e-mail suivant : famillemartin80 @hotmail.com
Je souhaiterais savoir pourquoi vous la vendez ? Et Quel est votre dernier prix ? Est-ce qu’il y a des frais supplémentaires à prévoir sur votre annonce?”
I received the same message under several user names (also on lacentrale.fr) but the email address was the same. I am not sure what they wanted of me but it’s not advisable to switch to email comms
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On the other hand…when I wanted to move from manual to automatic carwise, I found what looked like the perfect candidate on LBC. The car was in Bordeaux and, as I was heading with a couple of dogs from Brittany to Spain, I stopped off and checked it out.
It seemed perfect so I left a small deposit and continued on my way. He wanted payment by bankers’ cheque which you have to buy from your bank so there was a couple of weeks or so delay before I could get a friend to drive me down there to collect it. He had done all the paperwork and presented a new CT along with a bottle of wine. The latter was because the CT had passed it but noted a small crack in a reverse light lens (which is still there 
)
Regularly serviced, it has done in my charge 215,000 kms with the only repair a new gearbox after 3 years, and I am still really really happy with it. 
Agreed.
LBC is better for just that reason. They hold the payment until the buyer indicates he’s happy - or for 3 days after delivery if the buyer hasn’t objected.
The one issue with that is the scam where someone who has a broken item, or just buys a broken item for next to nothing finds an identical working one on Leboncoin, buys it, say’s it’s broken when arrived and returns the broken item, keeping the working one. It’s happened to someone I know on a quite expensive item. If you don’t keep serial numbers (if the item has one) then it’s difficult to prove the returned item wasn’t the one sent.
I never sell by post on Leboncoin, only in person and only for cash.