I’m often asked if I were ever the victim of a scam.

Short answer, no.  Long answer, not online and luckily I didn’t lose a large amount of money.

Back when we were first married, my wife and I wanted a new TV for our house.  We saw an advert (a full 2 page spread advert to be exact) in the local paper for an auction and it had really cheap TVs.  I bought a mystery item, which turned out to be useless to me.  Fortunately it was just what someone else needed, so they bought it off me.  Total loss, around £10.  A few years later, I bought carpet off the back of a lorry.  The old “we’ve got some surplus left from recarpeting a hotel” scam.  I bought a roll of carpet from them at a pretty good price.  It wasn’t the size they claimed it was, but it perfectly fitted the room I wanted it for, was in great condition and lasted until we moved.  So it actually worked out the same price as the same sized roll of cheap carpet if I’d bought it in a shop.

So to summarise, yes, I was scammed but my losses were very small.  As for online, no I’ve never been scammed.  Maybe those two incidents around 20 years ago taught me the old adage “If it seems too good to be true, then it probably is”.