Safety Rules for Buying and Selling Online

We advise all our users to read our safety warnings to ensure the best experience while buying and selling on our site.

• When buying and/or selling, you should meet locally and exchange money in person. Try not to accept cheques.
• Never provide your sensitive personal information such as email address, date of birth, copies of critical identity documents credit card details, debit card details and bank account details to others over the Internet.
• For personal safety and ease, you should arrange to meet in a busy public place, if possible. Also, it’s a good idea to take a family member or friend with you.
• You should inspect the item carefully in person to ensure it is as described in the ad and any issues are known upfront before you exchange any money.
• If a buyer/seller is coming to your workplace or home, ensure you have a friend with you and for added safety, ask the buyer/seller to show their personal identification before you exchange any goods/services.
• When hiring home services, ask the service provider to produce proof of qualification and relevant liability insurance before you hire.
• If something sounds too good to be true it probably is. You should ignore such ads and report them to us.
• Buy and Sell does not offer any sort of buyer or seller protection and/or payment programs. If you receive any email, even if it comes from a buy and sell email account and/or has the buy and sell logo, that discuss about such things, you should ignore it and please report it to us. Buy and Sell emails should only come from [email protected]
• Be aware of scams and fraud tricks commonly used by scammers. Never trust sellers who promises large amount of money for tasks, help, etc.
• Please report any fraudulent ads, emails or any other suspicious activities by community members. In case of illegal or fraud activity, we strongly recommend you to report it to the Police first and then us. Buy and sell will take scammers seriously.

Pet scammers:

• Be aware of sellers selling pets from overseas and always buy locally. If the pet is interstate and/or you are not allowed to inspect the pet in person for whatever reason, it is probably a scam, the biggest giveaway is they tent to make sure you will take a great amount of care and if they want money to be sent upfront without showing you the pet, it is likely a scam.
• Some scammers advertise without even having a pet. They just want to cheat innocent people. So, always be cautious.
• Scammers want to bypass the Buy and Sell messaging system and will encourage you to handover your email address and/or phone number so that they can contact you directly. Make sure you use our internal messaging system and report the seller to us if you feel something is not right.
• Price of pets advertised by scammers are usually advertised at a very attractive price when compared to the market price.
• If scammers usually say that they can email you more photos in your email address, don’t believe them. The seller can post on buyswapsell.net.au up to 20 photos in an ad.

Jobs safety tips:

• Unless “work from home” jobs are offered by well-known organizations, simply avoid or ignore them as they are mostly like to sell you a useless software or work for them and not getting paid.
• Use ASIC website, ABN Lookup to find out any public information about the company if is real or fraudulent and ask the job poster lots of questions, before agreeing to meet them in person. Always remember to bring a friend with you or advise them when and where are you going within working hours, or in a busy public place.
• Avoid any ads which guarantee you financial success, wealth and/or which will help you to get rich quick and never provide your bank or identification details when you apply for a job.
• Be wary of anyone who asks inappropriate or irrelevant questions.