so today we are going to tell you how we were nearly scammed out of 8
840 pounds yes it was this close to us losing that money hopefully this video will explain how the
scammers nearly got us and it will help you to avoid it so if you're new here we're machinery
nation but we've also got a dealership called haze machinery where we sell lots of chainsaws
mowers power tools trailers and atvs so we sell lots of cool stuff and by no surprise
lots of people tried to scam us out of it so we're fairly on top of things when it comes to scams
normally it's credit card fraud where people will ring us up from a different part of the country
with someone else's card and trying to get us to send it to a different address well that doesn't
work with us because that scam has been around a long time and we can sense that out pretty quickly
in actual fact five or six years ago we did send out something which someone paid for with someone
else's card over the phone and we lost 600 quid yeah it's a big life lesson it was our mistake
but it hasn't happened again and we're on top of it but this scam that happened the other day is
something new let's go and find out so how did it all start well we we received hundreds of emails
a day and we had an enquiry come through someone looking for a chipper yeah they wanted a chipper
they wanted a particular one they just asked about availability nothing different there all seemed
fairly normal so i send it through to josh who's the sales director here and he replied to them
saying yep got this lovely chipper available it's this price if you'd like it let us know
cool nothing nothing new anyway they replied back saying could we you know could we pay by backs and
get our driver to pick it up yep nothing uncommon there that's all quite normal so that all went
through so then communication went a little bit quiet for a few weeks which is fine you
know customers go away and think about things and then come back to us so it was all seeming pretty
normal and then they came back to us and said oh is this chipper still available we said it's not
but you know we've got more stock coming in soon so if you'd like to reserve one pop us across a 10
deposit as we always ask and you know we can reserve it for you for when it comes in absolutely
fine they replied back saying yeah not a problem we'll baxter the money and then the interesting
bit started so how it got interesting josh received an email from said customer saying that
they'd paid us the deposit but they hadn't paid us the 400 pound deposit that we had asked for
no they had paid us hundred and 8804 pounds eight thousand eight hundred and forty yes that's a
little bit of an overpayment and they said oh you know whoops a daisy we paid you the wrong invoice
we paid you our builders invoice instead of yours so i thought okay mistakes happen so josh came and
spoke to me and said you know how has the money come through to the bank i checked yes the money
was there you know it looked all absolutely fine so i said why don't you pop it through to suzanne
and she'll pay the money back so suzanne asked josh to get the bank details from the customer
nothing new there you know we need the bank details to do a refund but at the bottom of the
email it said don't worry if you can't verify the bank our bank doesn't do that or something along
those lines think hmm that's where the old alarm bells start ringing and when you see stuff like
that you think something doesn't quite feel right here and on the spell it says ring for a pint and
i you know to be fair i could have quite done another point when we sort of read that because
something didn't feel right you know we had 8 840 pounds in our bank so suzanne entered the bank
details into the our bank to pay them back just to see what would happen and yet lo and behold
we couldn't verify their details so she brings me up and goes have you had a look at this payment
what's your thoughts i thought well you know all seem fine you know i didn't see any problems with
it at all but what suzanne noticed was that actually the amount in the bank versus what
it cleared was different oh yes how different 8 840. so i said right ring the bank see what's
going on see what they say and we'll take it from there so suzanne hears back from the bank
to find out that they couldn't really confirm or deny whether it was fraud because no fraud had
actually taken places yet what they could tell us is that there is a possibility that the people who
had paid the money had paid it in in a different way so it turns out now you can go into a bank
with a check from whoever put it into a machine because obviously you know they don't want to
have cashiers anymore you put it into the machine and then you enter the bank details
that you want to send that check to well guess what it was our bank details they sent it to
you never guess what happened to the check though that's right the check is going to bounce and
that's the whole scam they got going on so the bank did advise us obviously not to pay the money
back until it cleared properly because there's obviously still a chance that it was an honest
email why we weren't paying it back we had three or four emails from this customer saying please we
need our money back where is it oh my god please where's my where's my money um i'm getting annoyed
now and stuff like that and it just all wasn't adding up and we you know to be fair by this point
we're pretty sure that we were being scammed to be fair we held on to the money we didn't do anything
with it and lo and behold the next day yes that money had disappeared from the account because
the check had bounced so the moral of the story is if you are not 100 sure that that money has
cleared into your bank don't pay it back either wait for it to clear or it is probably a scam
so that's the best advice i can give you luckily josh's and suzanne's quick reactions to notice
that something was not quite right with this transaction managed to save us 8 840 pounds
because if we had sent it back that same day we'd have never seen that again there's no protection
there's no insurance the bank wouldn't have done it we would have physically done it so we have
lost our money so please be careful please make sure you are 100 sure that that money is correct
we're machinery nation please like share and subscribe and we'll see you in the next one