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We've just been sat talking to Mr & Mrs Blick from Redditch for the last few hours, who have recently had the misfortune of being victims of a scam online for buying a caravan. It started with an advertisement on Friday Ad online which was for a Swift Conqueror 630 SAL. Mrs Blick contacted the seller through the website who was registered under the name 'Alexandra Giles', apparently from Scotland. They only ever talked via email and text message but the communication seemed normal - they talked about that she had just come back off holiday and their son was going to school and that she couldn't talk during working hours. The next stage was that the seller had created a private listing on eBay for Mr & Mrs Blick to purchase the caravan through a 'Buy it now' to confirm their purchase. 'Alexandra Giles' then supplied information about eBay's private listing terms and conditions, payments terms etc all from the website which looked completely legitimate. Her eBay account also had 73 positive feedbacks left with a 100% rating - the account was deleted immediately after the money was transfered. She stated that the account details were for a PayPal account and that the money would sit in there until Mr & Mrs Blick authorised that they were happy to transfer the funds upon receiving and inspecting the caravan, of which they had 7 days to do upon it being delivered to them from Scotland, that the seller was arranging. Mrs Blick took all the paper work to Barclays bank to check it was all legitimate and the bank agreed it all looked fine and they paid the funds into the supposed PayPal account. It turned out that the account was in fact the sellers own account and the funds were transfered into the account directly and no caravan was either delivered and all communication was stopped and online accounts deleted. Mr & Mrs Blink have now approached the bank who will do nothing even though it is fraudulent, as she authorised the payment and they will not look into who is registered to the bank details - all they know is that the account is registered in London. They have also contacted the police who do not seem to be doing a great deal about it. And the police can neither obtain details of who owns the account the funds were transfered to. Mr & Mrs Blink were scammed out of £3,300 - they did all the usual research when buying online to try and prevent being scammed but unfortunately on this occasion the scammer was one step ahead. They come to us today and have now successfully purchased a caravan from us feeling much more assured from buying from a caravan dealer who is local to them. Please make people aware that there are scams currently happening on websites like Friday Ad, eBay and they also found someone that was scammed on Gumtree for a trailer caravan. If anyone has experienced something similar to the situation above or knows someone that has, please do let us know as we would love to try and help them get their money back. The scammer can be operating under any name and can say they are from any location, so be cautious and aware - if it seems too good to be true it probably is and the benefits of buying a caravan directly from a caravan dealer greatly outweigh finding a 'bargain/cheap' deal online. Thank you for your time!