Dog Scams
We at dogs.ie take these dogs scams very seriously. We have seen a high number of ads from countries outside Ireland, and these are generally scams. We have posted a collection of these dog scammer emails in our dog forum, and we list all the submissions that we suspect are scams. Here are a few steps you can take to avoid being scammed, and we would recommend you have a read through these. If you come across a possible scam on our website, please report it to us.
Detecting Dog Scams
- Generally these people use email addresses from free services, and typically have numbers at the end of them.
- The photos uploaded are generally of dogs in professional photo shoots with neutral backgrounds and decorations on the dogs.
- When contacting a seller, say you are interested in seeing the dog. If the seller says what dog, or what ad are you referring to, then you can be sure that they have multiple ads running on a number of websites. This might also identify a puppy farm.
- Always ask to see the dog, and its mother before you purchase.
- If the seller says they will give you the dog for free, but you have to pay shipping, run a mile and report it.
- Also if a seller asks you to pay insurance for sending the dog (freight insurance) to you, it’s probably a scam.
- Pedigree dogs should cost from €500 upwards, so if you see a free dog but has a great linage, then there must be a reason for the sale. Either it’s a scam or something like Marley and Me
- Sometimes scammers will ask you to send a donation to an orphanage somewhere, like Cameroon via Western Union. Again, report it and run a mile.
- Ads mentioning AKC are generally a scam, as in Ireland the AKC is not the recognised registration authority for dogs.
- These ads generally have bad English with many misspellings.
Finally, common sense will help you out when looking for a dog for sale . If you think someone is really giving you a really good bargain, please don’t purchase. Simply ignore these sellers, and in the long run you won’t be disappointed.
If you have any tips or experience with dog scams, do feel free to leave a comment below
