If you are interested in buying a dog or a puppy, then you will be joining to hundreds of other people across the country that are interested too. It used to be the case that classifieds ads for dogs and puppies would be found in local newspapers, but these days this is not really the case, as most of the adverts are found online. However, because most of the ads are now found online, more people are taking the opportunity to run scams.
If you have come across an advert that does not have a phone number, then you are probably looking at a scam advert. Here are some of the reasons why you may be looking at a scam.
Keeping Postage Fees
Most frequent thing that happens worryingly frequently is people collecting money for dogs and puppies that they don’t actually have or mean to send. These adverts will not usually have a phone number, because they do not want to get caught out. However, they will tell you that they are overseas or in a different city. They will then ask that you pay the postage prices for transporting your new pet. Of course, there is no dog or puppy in the first place, and because you have no phone number or address for the supposed owner, you will have no way of reporting them, and they will have gotten away with your money. This is one reason why you have to be very cautious of adverts without contact information.
Here is desperate e-mail we got just the other day from one of our visitors:
“I would like to report abuse re the ad entitled “vaccinated snow white Maltese puppies”. Clara did not want to meet myself or my boyfriend so we could meet the puppy. Instead Clara posed as a deaf 57 year old so she didn’t have to speak to either of us on the phone. Instead she claimed that she was in London not Dublin and would simply post the puppy to my address.
Please advise whether you are going to investigate this? Clara has not emailed me back since I said I wanted to meet and I believe that her puppies in question may have been bred illegally. This is very upsetting and is not the way ‘GO PUPS’ should be conducting their business.
I would appreciate an update re your action for this case. I am happy to forward you all email correspondence.
Many Thanks
Linda “
In such cases we may provide IP address of the person who placed the Ad which will make it much easier to spot the scam if it comes to that, but as a non-profitable body we can’t do much more than that.
Collecting and Re-Selling Email Addresses
One of the things that a lot of people do is to collect email addresses. This is so that they can then sell these addresses to marketing companies. When this happens, your email inbox will be infiltrated with spam mail. So, if you have come across an advert for a dog or a puppy that does not have a telephone number, but asks you to email them, then you should be very wary.
Dishonest Breeders: Selling NOT a Purebreed Puppy
Obviously, when you pay for a dog or a puppy, you expect them to be the breed that they have paid for. However, a lot of people will mix certain dog breeds and sell them as a pure breed. This is not only a scam, but it can also be unhealthy for the resulting dog breed as well. People that do this will not usually include a phone number in their advert.
As you can see, there are a number of ways in which you can get scammed by falling for adverts that don’t have a phone number. If you want to avoid getting scammed, then you should only pay attention to adverts that have genuine telephone numbers.