Safety Tips

Safety tips

As a valued user we are providing you with general safety tips that will help make you safe while using Balloshi website:

• Please be advised that Balloshi does not own any physical advertised products that are advertised by individuals or businesses. As such, Balloshi website does not guarantee any of those products or has any responsibilities whatsoever related to buying or selling these products. For that reason, when buying or selling, you should meet in-person, in public area with people accompanying you, to inspect the product yourself and exchange funds and products with sellers according to your agreement under your responsibility.
• Never send or wire money to sellers or buyers. This includes mailing a cheque or using payment services like PayPal, credit cards, Western Union or any other payment methods. Although these sites can be useful and secure, scammers may use them and may even falsify documents from a legitimate company to fool you. Once you inspect the product and got satisfied and agreement made between buyer and seller, hand-to-hand cash money exchange is the safest method.
• Balloshi does not offer any sort of protection programs or secure payment systems for any items or advertised products. Any emails or web sites that talk about such systems are frauds, even if they may have Balloshi logo. If you receive any emails promoting these services, please forward the message to us.  
• Be wary of emails asking you to confirm your account or a password or email address change that was not requested by you. These may be phishing emails by scammers trying to gain access to your account. Any emails we send requiring you to log in will bring you directly to our site.
• Do not give out personal or banking information over the net (e.g. credit card number, bank account number).
• Inform Balloshi of any attempted fraud or suspicious emails, Ads, or other activity by other users. In the case of fraud, file a police report and contact us so we can block bad users from using our site.
• Use common sense. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Please take these steps before you contact a seller, renter, or ad poster about an ad: 

• Search for the market price of the product you are intending to buy then compare that with the posted price and look if it is reasonable (remember if the price is too good to be true then it is probably a scam !!).
• Make your search on the person or the business who is selling or posting the product and how reputable are they.
• Once you are satisfied, go and see the product and make sure that it is a true ad and not scam. (golden rule: never buy, rent, accept any deal or make any money transaction unless you meet face to face with the person and inspect the product professionally).
• Please make sure that when you meet with the other person make it happen during the day time in public area and always have someone with you (wither he/she is the buyer who is coming to see you or he/she is the seller who you visiting to see the product), that’s the safest approach.

Tips to avoid car defraud

• If the car price out of line compared to other similar models on the market? It may be a scam
• If the setting in the picture does not match the location of the seller, for example, if you see sea view in ad posted in Riyadh then it may be a scam
• Make sure you know what is legally required of both you and the seller to make transfer of car ownership in your country.
• Make sure that the model and the kilometers listed in the Ad match that of the vehicle. 
• Make sure you confirm the dealer warranty is valid if poster claim so. 
• Your best way is to take the car to a dealer and inspect it professionally.

Tips to avid job defraud

Before you apply for a job, please do a little research to determine if the job is legitimate before sending any personal information, or even your resume. Here are a few questions you should look for ; 

• Has the company or the poster provided their name?
  • If they haven’t provided their name then we encourage you to ask for it before forwarding any personal information. 
  • If yes, we highly recommend you to visit the company's website and see how professional is it, if there is contact or location information, and if there are jobs and career information posted on the site. Be cautious if they don’t have a website
  • How much do you know about the listed job? do you know what you’ll be doing or how much you’ll be paid? … Be suspicious if these vital data are not available
  • Does the job sound too good to be true? Avoid listings that guarantee you wealth or that will help you get rich fast. Stay clear of listings that offer you high income for part-time hours. 

Remember, any reputable company will welcome questions from possible. So ask questions before you submit your resume, if they refuse to answer questions or you find it hard to reach them, they are likely not worth your time.

Tips for avoiding Real Estate Scams

When looking for a new unit whether rental unit or house for sale, please consider these points to avoid getting scammed ..

• make sure you personally, or someone you know, can see the inside of the place before you give a deposit as many foreign scammers will post pictures but will not be able to show you the inside of the unit as they actually DON’T own it. 
• Ask for more images as owner or real estate agent can provide you with more photos.
• Look up the property address and conduct a ‘Street View’ to ensure that the property exists and appears the same as in the images.
• Ask yourself if the price match the price of the unites of same size and nearby location ? Please keep in mind that if it sounds too good to be true, it likely is! 
• In Rental Ads, be wary of overly descriptions and extensive lists of features as these are often signs of a real estate agent marketing a property, and not that of a the owner trying to rent out their house/ apartment.
• Be careful of Ads that ask for responses that include Age, Occupation, Income, Gender and more personal information such as banking information as these can often be attempts to store information.
• If renting, Ask the user to provide you with ownership documents. The name provided on the lease should match the name in the ownership document.

Scams scenarios to avoid

You received a suspicious reply to one of your Ads or you received odd reply after replying to an Ad?

• When receiving replies about your Ad, be suspicious of any reply that does not make specific reference to what your Ad is about, such as “I am ready to buy the product, or please contact me in regard to your account”. Replies like this are generally sent out en mass by fraudsters hoping to get reponders
• Be aware that sometimes during negotiations, the fraudster will attempt to organize a transaction that is not face to face. Don’t trust anyone unless you meet the person, or his/her representative, face to face and make the deal. When you get suspicious reply kindly contact us with the details

Someone is trying to act as a third party website to facilitate transactions

Balloshi does not have any partnerships with third party websites that facilitate transactions. Any website or person claiming to have an agreement with Balloshi where they facilitate transaction and payment via their website is fraudulent. We just recommend face to face and hand to hand interactions.

You received email from balloshi with congratulation your ad is posted yet you have NOT posted any ads

If you actually did not post an ad and you received an email to confirm that you indeed did then someone is illegally using your Balloshi account to scam other users. Please sign in to your account, immediately change your Balloshi password and delete any ads that you did not post. Also verify your existing listings were not modified. Then please inform us. Your password had probably been obtained using "phishing", a process where scammers send you fake emails that look like they are from Balloshi and ask you to sign in on a fake Balloshi site. To ensure that you do not fall for phishing tricks, always be sure that when you sign into balloshi the address in your web browser starts with http://www.balloshi.com

Someone has contacted me offering to sell my item for me, for a fee. Is this supported by Balloshi?

Balloshi recommends selling your items by using our website by yourself only, and dealing in-person only. We do not recommend dealing with any users who:
- Contact you about posting your Ads on their website
- Offer to sell your items for you (usually for a fee) 
- Offer any kind of consignment service or any other service of this nature. 
Balloshi cannot validate the legitimacy of these users, nor can we guarantee that these are not fraudulent. If you feel that you have been solicited by a 3rd party via your Ad, please notify us immediately.

Frauds claiming to be associated with Balloshi

All emails claiming that a transaction will be handled via a Balloshi service, or a wire transfer to our account are fraud. Balloshi does not have any financial service of any kind that support or facilitate buying or selling any posted items. We recommend hand-to-hand cash money transactions.

I have been a victim of fraud

If you have been scammed, please contact your local police and contact us with the details under contact us section in the footer of the website or in the help section of the mobile website and you can always report the ad in the detailed ad page.