No, it was a scam. I’ve reported it to the police (fraud action) and to Gumtree.
The amount lost wasn’t huge and in crime terms was trivial. Smarts over here tho... but we live and learn and I’ll be opting out of non PayPal transactions.... and using the not friends payments more on gumtree.
Tbf the whole experience has left me pretty flat...
I'm really sorry to hear that it was a scam, after you were so excited at getting this machine. The amount may not have been huge, but it sort of makes you lose confidence in using these sites again and that's not good.
You could just have walked away from it and not said anything but you have done the bravest thing by reporting it to the Police and to Gumtree. Hopefully that means someone else may not be scammed anytime soon by these same scammers.
I wanted a purse once (as did my friend) . The design of it was not available in the UK but was available in the US. I saw someone selling them on ebay (a trade seller) and the total cost with p&p wasn't an awful lot more than if it had been bought from the UK (but did have customs to pay on it though
). Anyways, the purses arrived and I just felt some of the quality on my purse (we chose different colours) didn't quite seem to be like the brand should be, small things but I felt the purse wasn't the brand and was a copy.
I had used Paypal. I emailed the Seller and she was adamant that it was the genuine thing (and she sells these in many countries). Anyway to cut a long story short. She paid back all the money plus p&p for my purse (the other one seemed fine) and told me to keep the purse. it took a few emails etc and I did advise Paypal as well. But I got the money back.
Taught me a lesson too and left a bit of a bad taste too.
You need to remember you have bought several vintage machines before? And, you weren't scammed, so it was just one bad apple. So you must have been doing something right
That's the way I viewed it for myself too. But I try to use PayPal mostly as they are very supportive.
lizzy