Any way to fuck someone over on a wire transfer?
 

I have one of my bikes for sale on Ebay and this guy in Switzerland keeps emailing me because I have for sale in north america only. He wants to wire transfer the money (bank wire) and then have the bike picked up. I know alot of people try to do scams with fake money orders like this but how safe is the bank wire?

I've never heard of a fraudulent bank wire but I just want to be sure before I tell the guy I'll sell my bike to him.

Famous nigerian scam:
He'll send you a wire which is $100 over the sale price... or something like that. Search Google on that.

Your dealing with Switzerland and North America... unlikely a scam on wires, but get these funds deposited into your account and cleared of any "source of funds" paperwork first, - before releasing your bike.

Wires funds are removed from a client account when the banks sends the wire - it's not easy to have this reversed, if ever.

I think I'm just going to tell him no deal, I dont feel comfortable with this. Already there are 67 other people with my bike on thier watch list.

But someone can get online access to a bank account, send a wire, by the time the real owner of the account finds out, the guy just picked up the bike on day 1 or 2 after the wire was sent. the charges will be reversed once fraud is discovered and you are fucked out of both. you could catch them, by asking tons of questions when the guy comes for the bike and take his pic and ask for ID, etc.

PS I'd be more concerned about the bank losing the wire on route :winkwink: I've had wires get "lost" for almost 12 weeks, - but that's not very common.

don't do, there are ways to scam someone using a wire transfer

Isn't there Wire Fraud protection laws? I thought wires were one of the safest means of transferring funds?
WG

Basically the day the wire leaves, - it will go thru whatever is the "international branch" of the sending bank. When it leaves there, it sure ain't gonna come back and charges are not gonna be accepted by the recipient bank.

The liability is with the sending bank - and they don't (or should not) send out wires from accounts without some decent documentary support.

Despite that, there is no hurry in passing over goods. Nothing like waiting a week:winkwink:

Think they prob are the safest of all "money sending" methods.

We've had literally millions transferred by wires and only problem which has ever happened is when the sender does not give sufficient wire information or the bank sometimes "loses" the wire for a while - but it enventually comes thru.

I thought something else from the headline

I just emailed the guy and told him to buy someone else's bike.

After a wire is sent you can reverse it within 48 hours. After that, you can't do shit.

i allways thought wire's were like cash once you get it no one can take it back.

Wires are like cash. There is no 48 hour reversal bullshit. As soon as it hits your account, you can withdraw it. It's a deposit. You can't reverse deposits. Only the account owner can withdraw money. We are not talking about chargebacks on credit cards here. I used to work for a bank in my previous life. This is the way it works.

bump for you

Yep.. the transation is instigated by the sender and his/her bank and both take responsibility for this and once it gets delivered - that's it.

You happen to know if there is such a thing (as mentioned previously on this thread) of initiating a wire transfer from an online account and without having any further support than "online docs"??

I've always had to sign physical documents to start a wire transfer - and seems dangerous from a bank's angle if it was possible to do this online.

that would be the sending banks problem if there was fraud not the recieving banks problem.

Yep.. agree sandman! :thumbsup

i thought wire transfers were final ... no?

I've been doing business on wire transfers for 10 yrs and had very very few problems. It's safer than credit card or other money transfers.
seanchai

Yea.. they are...

Wires should be safe. I have a buddy that ships bikes to Switzerland all the time if you need an consultation