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I was contacted by e-mail by a person in NY. He had a Steinway baby grand and an upright that he said he was shipping to Nashville. He was giving them to his 2 nephews who were moving to Nashville. His dilemma was that he wanted to pay for it by credit card and the shipping company didn't accept CCs. I was to take his CC number and charge $3500. I was to keep $500 of it and send the rest to the shipping company. Then he would have the shipping company deliver the pianos to my shop, and I was to restore them. He would then give them to his nephews when I was through with them. He would like an estimate of how much it would cost to restore them. He wanted my phone number, address, and fax number. ???
I ask him to send me pictures of the pianos both inside and out. I needed to have an idea of what all was needed to be done.
I sensed that it was a scam and I told him that I sensed it was. I needed some proof that it wasn't a scam. I told him I would like to work on the pianos, but that I needed the pictures.
I never heard from him again. It he went to someone else that is Ok. I really am too busy to fool with someone from NY anyway. What alerted me was that I have seen this done to two of my daughters before, and my girl friend's son had a friend that got hooked for $3000 dollars for the similar situation.
Beware of this type of scam!

Jay's Piano Tuning Service
www.jays-piano-tuning.com

Versions of this appear to surface from time to time in the USA.

I thought everyone in the biz had got this email about a year or 2 ago.
There are so many scams out there you would need an entire forum to expose and discuss them.

You actually engaged in an email exchange??? Use common sense and intuition. If it sounds odd, it probably is odd.

No, it is not a scam. You can make $3,000 on this deal. Send me just $300 and I will explain it to you.

I got this email about 2 weeks ago too. I remebered it being discussed here a year or 2 ago. Seems an odd scam attempt to me.

Send me $30 and I will check for you if this UnrightTooner guy can be trusted.

Kees

Ok, ok, ok. I will only charge $270. No need to waste money on Kees' proposal. See, you can Trust Me

By responding to these kinds of emails now the perp or the robot can see that the email address is live and that address can now be sold to spammers.

Just send me $3.00 and I'll tell you never to trust Mr. Unright. Oops! 'Guess I already gave you the information.
OK, now the old adage, "Information is worth exactly what you pay for it" applies.

Yes supply I asked him to send pictures and then told him I sensed a scam.
If he already had my e-mail address, I figured not giving out any other info would not help him.

I have dealt with other similar scams in the past.

Yes, I can see that. That's why I like Yahoo. They have a way to stop scammers.

I got a similar e-mail to that the other day but just deleted it. I also got one a year or so ago. I also got, just the other day, an e-mail that used a well known PTG member's e-mail address saying that he and his wife were stranded in the Philippines, having lost a wallet and credit cards, etc., and needing an urgent cash loan.

The give-away is how it was written with language usage that no North American would ever construe. Someone recently told me that there are whole "societies" in Nigeria who live off of scams such as these. They love to show each other how well they are doing compared to each other with money that was obtained exclusively through fraud! A new twist on "keeping up with the Jones's".

It is apparently sometimes possible for one of these spammers to "highjack" an e-mail address and start spewing spam all over a legitimate e-mail list such as that of PTG members.

It is the price one pays for keeping the same e-mail address year after year and publicizing it so that clients who are legitimately interested in our services can find us easily. My business e-mail server knows how to detect such spam, so I usually don't even see most of it but occasionally, something gets through.

You just have to learn how to get wise to the wise guys and simply not respond to them. It helps your e-mail server to report such an attempt as spam. It knows when it is coming from Nigeria or if the IP address has been reported multiple times. Each report of spam reinforces that. As others have said, however, if you actually respond to such a message, you are then known as someone who can possibly be scammed and they will go after you.

We all learn the most important things the hard way!

I once stumbled upon a website, something about "Scam the Scammer" where people make a sport of "playing along" with the scammer, and turn the thing around and scam them.
Interesting reading for a few minutes, but it's a pastime for people with more time on their hands than I have.

Actually there are several forums dedicated to just this. Google "scam forum" and see what comes up.

(Let the user beware -- some of these may be scams in their own right!)

ddf