White Van Man Scam

A question about : White Van Man Scam

Just wondered if anyone else has had this happen?

On Tuesday around 4.30pm a man in a white van pulled up outside the house where my hubby was busy fixing the car. They had a chat and I hear my hubby say that he'd just go and ask me. I went out and inside the van where quite a few mattresses - the van was unmarked by the way.

The story goes that the guy had been delivering these top of the range memory foam mattresses to a store but that there had been a delivery mix-up and they had ordered too many. He couldn't go back to the warehouse with a van full of mattresses still so he wanted to get rid of them (sound familiar so far?). Therefore he was offering these Ј400 mattresses to us for Ј100.

My husband was fully suckered in and about to hand over the money before I threatened to chop his hands off if he did any such thing.

The guy put on a convincing act, telling me to take down his number plate and saying he'd accept a cheque.

My husband is still convinced we missed out on a bargain, but I have heard from someone in East Anglia that the same thing happened to them, they also declined to buy one.

Has anyone heard of this? Are they stolen, counterfeit or what?

Best answers:

• Probably not stolen but worth about 50 quid at best.
• They'll stop at nothing - used to be videos, then DVD players, flat screen TV's, leather/PVC jackets, laptops which turn out to be a couple of water bottles in a bag etc. I remember throwing out a couple of old videos at the dump and a guy came along wanting them. I expect they'd be poly-wrapped and passed off as new.
• i remember when the blokes in a flash car used to stop you and ask you if you wanted to buy a really expensive watch for the knockdown price of 20 quid!
  couple of mates did it the fools and got palmed off with something that even lizzie duke couldnt sell for a fiver
• Have seen the scam on "The Real Hustle" with DVD players and the like. When they "put the DVD player back into the box" they didn't - and ended up selling the marks a couple of phone books.
  Other than them being cheap mattresses, I can't quite think how they're going to scam you. But I'm certain that they would somehow.
• That's what got me stumped, thinking about what their scam could be. You could see the mattresses, they were labelled and looked genuine enough. The guy offered to take a cheque, which we could stop if they turned out to be fake, so what was the catch exactly?
  I need to convince my husband that we did the right thing in turning the guy away but he's just peeved off that he didn't get his sooper dooper mattress (we do actually need a new mattress).
• They will be 2nd-hand or cheap nasty ones, probably not real memory foam.
  Just think about the story
  the guy had been delivering these top of the range memory foam mattresses to a store but that there had been a delivery mix-up and they had ordered too many. He couldn't go back to the warehouse with a van full of mattresses
  Why not? It's not the delivery driver's fault or problem if a customer won't take delivery of an order. What company would want a delivery driver to stop off and start flogging things of the back of the van rather than returning the goods to the firm. Can you imagine it happening in 'real life'. Oh you ordered 2 Ј400 mattresses from Dreams bed store but when the delivery man turned up you only wanted one, so you wouldn't accept the other. What can the poor delivery man do? Option A - deliver one and return one to the dreams depot. Option B - knock on some random persons door and sell them the mattress for only Ј100, thereby losing his employer the mattress and Ј300. Give over.
• Not the first time it's happened.
  https://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/fo...,443912,444014
  No answers there, though. (Unless some of what looks like code talk to me gives some answers!)
• Oh I'm under no illusions that it's a scam. Just wondered what type of scam that's all.
  He obviously can't switch the mattress for another one as we could see every single mattress (he had about 5 in the small van). If they were crap and cheap, we could just stop the cheque. The only thing I can think of is that they were stolen.
  Unless I'm missing something else?
• Also, if you did pay by cheque, it means some fly-by-night has your bank details!!!!
• They may well be genuine, he could have just stolen them from the warehouse, he may work there or have a mate who does. I used to know a guy who delivered DFS sofas and he used to take orders from friends and neighbours, which he and his mate would load onto his van and sell on. They said that the DFS warehouse staff were so clueless that no-one ever noticed that stock was missing. I reckon everyone in my road had a DFS sofa at one time or another! (Not me obviously, I'm far too honest for that kind of thing )
• I had often wondered why there have been quite a few wants on our local freecycle, for empty Wii boxes, television boxes, ect ect, until the owner of the site advised us not to answer these wants, and she had found out that the empty boxes were being used to con people that there was actually a television, computer, or Wii in the boxes. The people hand over there money for a load of tat.
• We've had them round here with the sofas in the past. Just like the mattress, cheap tat.
  When they cant get rid of them that way, they say they're stolen and hey presto, loads of customers.
  Same with fake stuff. "It's not fake, it's stolen". This gets them queuing up.
• Of course they're just shoddy mattresses that will have a convincing wrapper round them. By the time you've discovered they're not what they seem the cheque will be long cashed and (as another poster said) some scammer will have your bank details.
• One problem with very low quality mattresses is that they can be made to feel comfortable when brand new. But then after a few weeks you start to realise that they are just tat.
• This happened to me a few weeks back (in Bristol). I was walking down the street when a bloke in a silver transit stopped me (I thought he wanted to ask directions) and offered to sell me a cheap memory foam mattress. Well, first of all, I've already got a perfectly good mattress at home, and secondly, I'm hardly likely to want to lug a mattress the mile or so home!