While most individuals on CollectibleBay have successful and positive experiences, from time to time we do receive reports of people attempting to scam or defraud the collecting community. We have found that one of the best ways to stay safe is to ensure that all transactions take place locally and in-person.
Remember that CollectibleBay is a local classifieds web site and not all ads are reviewed before published.
Please take the following precautions while using CollectibleBay:
- When buying or selling, you should meet in-person to thoroughly inspect the product and then exchange funds. Meet in a public place with many people around, such as a coffee shop.
- As a safe alternative to carrying cash, consider choosing your preferred third party cashless payment method(at your own discretion). Secure cashless payment methods include electronic money transfers. Never mail a cheque or wire money to sellers. Services like Western Union or MoneyGram should be avoided. Typically, scammers will use these services and will even falsify documents from a legitimate company. It’s best to avoid them entirely and keep things local!
- Be wary of emails asking you to confirm your account or a password or email address change that was not requested. These are very often phishing emails by scammers trying to gain access to your account. Any emails we send requiring you to log in will bring you directly to our site. The CollectibleBay sign in page should always show up as being secure in your web browser.
- Do not give out personal or banking information (e.g. social insurance number, bank account number) over the Internet.
- Inform us of any attempted fraud or suspicious emails, ads, or other activity by community members. In the case of fraud, file a police report and contact us.
- Use common sense. If something sounds too good to be true- it probably is.