Alissa Gillies
Complaint 130741 Details

"Alissa Gillies" posted an advertisement on Craigslist for a 3rd generation iPad ("The New iPad") with Wifi/4G and 64GB (still sealed in original packaging). The price posted on Craigslist was $525. I contacted her via email and she said that she had lowered the price to $350. I assumed this was because no one was buying at $525.

I asked her in an email where she had gotten the device, and she was she had gotten it as a bonus from work. That was enough personality for my naive self to consider her safe to do business with.

The main problem was that she said she moved back up to Vancouver, Canada and would have to ship the device to me. I proposed that we use PayPal so that the money can be put on hold and insured, etc. She ignored that offer and proposed we use a service called "InterParcel."

I googled them and found their website to be legitimate and people had written reviews saying that even though their service might be slow, it isn't a scammer site. Unfortunately, I didn't notice that the URL she gave me in the email was not "http://www.interparcel.com" but "http://www.vancouver-interparcel.com" which was almost an exact mirror of the real website.

I got an email from "Alissa" saying that she had dropped off the device and that I'd be getting a confirmation email from InterParcel with information on how to send a payment. The email address from them was "[email protected]" which again, I should have noticed wasn't consistent with their REAL website.

On June 28th, 2012 I went to my nearest Western Union agent and made payment of $350.00 USD to a "Heather Thompson" in Bolton, UK, as the payment information that "InterParcel Vancouver" had sent me. On the morning of June 29th, 2012 (today) I googled around still in amazement how I could have gotten such a good deal on a brand new iPad. Something was off. I finally found another ScamBook complaint that outlined almost exactly my story even with same first name "Alissa" and the URL being "http://www.ship-interparcel.com".

I immediately called Western Union and was able to get the full $350.00 refunded to me (save the $34 senders fee) and after some simple WhoIs registry searching I found the real email address associated with the vancouver-interparcel website and alerted him that the jig was up. His email is "[email protected]" just in case he decides to use it in business, AVOID THIS EMAIL.

So, I've learned only to deal with in-person transactions on Craigslist, that Western Union is a respectable organization that quickly handles refunds, and that iPads do NOT sell for cheap. Ever.