Safety

Common scams and fake trades

Nearly every marketplace scam works the same way: get you to pay before you have the thing, or get you to send money back before their payment is real. Here is what that looks like in practice.

The one rule that defeats almost all of this: see the item, in person, before any money moves. A scammer's entire business model depends on you not doing that.

How big the problem is

Australians reported $2.18 billion in scam losses in 2025, up 7.8% on the year before. Shopping scams — buying and selling online — accounted for $10.8 million across 12,248 reports where money was actually lost, a 22.2% increase on 2024.

The payment method matters. Cryptocurrency accounted for 36.2% of all reported losses ($121.3 million), with bank transfers close behind at $118.1 million. Both share the same property: once it is sent, it is gone. That is exactly why a scammer wants you to use them.

1. The fake listing (buyers)

A vehicle or e-ride is advertised well under market value. The seller is friendly, responds fast, and has a reason they cannot meet you. They ask for a deposit to "hold" it, or full payment before delivery. There is no vehicle.

Scamwatch has tracked this on Facebook Marketplace, Gumtree, Carsales, Autotrader and CarsGuide for years. The detail worth knowing: in one Scamwatch analysis, 97% of reports involved a scammer claiming to be in the military — navy, army or air force — because deployment is a plausible reason to be unreachable, unable to meet, and in a hurry.

What it looks like

Priced thousands below anything comparable.
Seller is "deployed", working on a rig, interstate, or has just moved and left the item with a shipping agent.
Refuses a video call, or will only send more photos — often photos that appear elsewhere online.
Suggests a third-party "escrow" or "buyer protection" service you have never heard of, sometimes with a convincing website.
Asks for a bank transfer, crypto, gift cards, or an eBay transfer.

What to do

Inspect it in person, at a residential address, in daylight. Bring someone.
Reverse-image-search the photos. Stolen listing photos are the norm, not the exception.
For a vehicle, run a PPSR search — about $2, and it tells you if money is owed on it or it has been written off or reported stolen.
Never pay a deposit to hold something you have not seen. There is always another one.

2. The PayID "account upgrade" scam (sellers)

This is the one aimed at you when you are the one selling, and it is currently the most common marketplace scam in Australia. It works because it inverts your guard: you are expecting to receive money, so you are not watching for a request to send any.

How it runs:

A keen buyer agrees to your price without haggling.
They say they have paid by PayID, and you receive an official-looking email that appears to be from your bank or from PayID.
The email says the payment is held because your account is "personal" and needs upgrading to a business account, and that the buyer has paid extra to cover the upgrade.
You are asked to send that extra amount back — or pay a "fee" — to release the funds.
No payment was ever made. The emails are fake. The money you send is your own.

PayID is free. There is no business account upgrade, no fee, and no held payment. A real bank never asks you to send money to receive money. If you get that email, the sale is a scam — stop replying.

A variant asks you to open a new bank account or new PayID "to facilitate the transaction". Same answer: no.

3. Overpayment and refund tricks (sellers)

A buyer "accidentally" pays too much and asks for the difference back, or pays and then asks you to refund because their plans changed. The original payment is later reversed — a stolen card, a fraudulent transfer, a reversed PayPal payment — and you are left having sent real money back against a payment that vanished.

Refund an overpayment only through the same channel it arrived, only once it has genuinely cleared, and never as a separate transfer to a different account.

4. Stolen goods

Buying stolen property does not make it yours. If it is identified, it can be seized and returned to its owner, and you are unlikely to get your money back from whoever sold it to you.

Vehicles are checkable — a PPSR search flags a reported-stolen vehicle. E-bikes and e-scooters are not: Australia has no national stolen register for them. That makes the paper trail matter far more:

Ask for the original receipt, and check the name matches the person selling.
Record the frame or serial number and check it is not ground off, overpainted or replaced.
Ask for the original charger, keys, spare battery and any app account — a thief rarely has them, and an account still bound to someone else can brick the device.
Be wary of several near-identical devices from one seller, or a "friend's" bike being sold on their behalf.

Queensland Police also publish a seized and forfeited e-mobility device list. Devices get seized for not meeting legal requirements — which is another reason to check the power and speed figures before you buy.

5. Fake and non-compliant batteries

A "bargain" battery or charger is the one fake that can burn your house down. Counterfeit cells, uncertified chargers and mismatched combinations are the common thread in lithium-ion fires.

No certification marking on the battery, charger or device means do not buy it, at any price.
A charger that is not the original, or "works fine, just use any charger", is a refusal.
Check the national recalls register before you pay.

Our rules and battery safety page lists the standards that apply and what the markings look like.

6. "Let's talk somewhere else"

A very early push to move to WhatsApp, Telegram, personal email or SMS is a signal in itself. Off-platform, there is no report button, no record we can act on, and no trail if it goes wrong. Scammers move fast because every hour a fake listing stays up is an hour it might be reported.

Keep the conversation here until you have met the person. It costs you nothing and removes their preferred ground.

What eRideList does, and what it cannot do

A person reviews every listing before it goes live, and we remove ads that look fraudulent. But our review is not verification — we do not confirm that an item exists, that the seller owns it, or that it is what they say it is. We never handle your money, hold no deposits and offer no buyer protection scheme. There is nothing for us to reverse.

That is exactly why the in-person inspection matters here more than on a platform that holds funds in escrow. Please do not treat a listing appearing on this site as a safety check that has already been done for you.

If something looks wrong — or has already happened

Report the listing. Every listing has a Report this listing link, or email support@eridelist.com.au. Tell us which listing and what happened. We aim to act on unsafe or unlawful content within the timeframes in our Terms.
Contact your bank immediately if you have sent money. Speed genuinely matters — a transfer can sometimes be recalled if you call within minutes or hours.
Report it to Scamwatch — it feeds the National Anti-Scam Centre and helps get sites taken down.
Report it to police through ReportCyber, which routes it to the right state force.
Keep everything — screenshots, messages, receipts, account numbers, the listing URL. Do not delete the conversation.

Being scammed is not a failure of intelligence. These are practised operations run at scale against people acting reasonably. Report it anyway — it is how the next one gets stopped.

Figures on this page are from the National Anti-Scam Centre's Targeting scams report for 2025 and Scamwatch alerts. Scam tactics change constantly — treat this as a guide to the shapes they take, not an exhaustive list.