When is a buyer genuine…

Today for the second day I had an email purporting to be from a Frenchman interested in my art.

Their first email

A generic reference to works tweaks some suspicion but it might be real.

My reply

The enquiry about how they heard about my work trying to strike up a conversation.

Their next mail

All three are listed in my online shop. Here are where things start to not connect. The online shop lists the price and description for each piece. Availability may have changed over the festive period of course. The next trigger for me is the incomplete address, some research looking for this name and address brings up nothing but confirms that Rue des Archives includes property numbers, not given.

As my suspicions have been raised I post the persons name on tap local artists group to see if anyone else has been approached by this named individual and a scam is confirmed. I have already sent the following response.

I set two questions, I await their next response before I halt the transaction – I would love to make a sale of £350 plus p and p at this time of year but I don’t get such requests. Visitors from abroad have been into the shop but not shown interest in pictures from the local sailing club.

I will follow his post up if it develops further – what a shame like many other things in life we have to be suspicious that a request such as this is more likely to be fraudulent than genuine. It does confirm why I prefer to sell face to face with my customers in an old fashioned bricks and mortar shop.

Any other people had such experiences?

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