Hi all,been approached by a gentleman (Tim Hoyte)about the purchase of "Moonshine".This may well be a genuine approach but I would urge all sellers to verify every detail before entering into negotiations as, there are very plausable out there who are not afraid to take advatage of the internet to mislead and possibly scam people.If Mr Tim Hoyte is genuine I offer my apologies but I am only safegaurding my interest.Wpould be pleased to hear from anyone who has had similar experience and how they dealt with it.Regards Bob

Bob,

I commend your care in checking out the details of a potential Buyer, I hope that your buyer turns out to be genuine and understands your concern.

See here:

Got the spelling of surmane wrong should read HOYLE.Now convinced this is a scam so please vet potential buyers fully especially with this name

So this is a scam right?

Maybe its a timely reminder that the forum has a world wide audience, not just members, and that if an invitation is published to make offers on a merlin which is for sale, then the likely outcome is the receipt of offers from all sorts of people, the majority will probably be perfectly normal people.  Poor old Mr Tim Hoyte and his guitar nearly got a very bad press indeed through no fault of his own!

Tim Hoyle tried it on me too. He just wanted my Pay Pal details so he could pay for a boat. He couldn't specify which boat though.

Perhaps we should say "a bloke who said his name was Tim Hoyle", just in case there is a real TH out there, who has done nothing wrong - just had his name pinched!

Perhaps we should say "a bloke who said his name was Tim Hoyle", just in case there is a real TH out there, who has done nothing wrong - just had his name pinched!

I also got the email from a Mr Hoyle. 
The south african email address set alarm bells ringing. 
Would be very suprised if it wasn't a scam.

I feel badly for genuine people named Tim Hoyle however this is a scam.  I have an ad out and this person wants it bad but they can't tell me what it is they would use it for!  They just want access to my PayPal account.

Same here! He wants to buy my boat without seeing it and is very eager to make a payment through paypal.

Interesting that he wants to pay via paypal for a boat.

The normal scam with paypal purchaser is for them pick items where shipping isn't 'signed' for (normally on e-bay)and then claim a refund via paypal for 'non receipt', even though they got the item, paypal will ALWAYS refund the purchaser, despite your protestations, certificate of posting etc.

I just can see that scam working with a boat. But maybe it could.

just *can't* see

Hello all,
I have also been receiving emails from Mr. Tim Holye (Holye, not Hoyle) expressing his interest in the sprint canoe I've been trying to sell. He didn't say what his job was, or what he needed the boat for; all he said was that a pickup agent would come pick it up. A scam didn't cross my mind at all, he seemed genuine so I was full prepared to help him out...UNTIL he said that I needed to send the agent 750$ out of my own pocket. That's when the red flag went up. I told him I'm not sending anyone my money. Now he is threatening to report this to PayPal and PayPal will take legal action because "the funds have already been withdrawn from his account and he cannot get them back" which I'm sure is completely BS because a successful corporation like PayPal would be able to cancel transactions easily. So this is my story, and I'm happy that I chose to search this guy's name on google before I proceeded with the possible transactions.
Cheers to everyone