Status: 19.10.2022 8:17 a.m
More and more false dealers are allegedly offering cheap wood on the Internet – and thus deceiving the customers. Fraud is often difficult for consumers to detect. What buyers should pay attention to.
Manuel Seifried heats his apartment near Rottweil half with oil and half with wood. As early as April he wanted to make provisions for the winter and order a load of firewood. So he looked for cheap suppliers on the Internet: “Due to the Ukraine war and the corona pandemic, wood prices had skyrocketed. That’s why I was looking for a cheap alternative supplier.”
On the Facebook marketplace, he finds an interesting offer from a supplier called “Brennholz-Store”: 50 euros per cubic meter of hardwood. An unusually low price. Manuel Seifried should pay half in advance. Not particularly unusual, he finds. But in subsequent contacts with the online retailer, the latter suddenly demands the entire sum in advance. “That seemed Spanish to me,” says Seifried. He doesn’t transfer. The delivery does not take place, as does the repayment of the advance payment.
“Millions are being ripped off”
Manuel Seifried fell for a so-called fake shop. A phenomenon that is now also spreading to the timber trade, as the police authorities are observing. “We have an increase in energy costs and thus the demand for wood has also increased,” says Marcel Ferraro from the police headquarters in Constance. “Wherever there is something to earn, scammers are not far.”
Manuel Seifried’s payment could be traced to France and then on to Eastern Europe. Then the trail got lost there.
One thing is certain: Seifried is not the only one cheated. “We’re talking about amounts in the millions that are being ripped off,” explains the Federal Association of Firewood Trade and Firewood Production SWR.
Websites are hijacked
The perfidy: Fake shops are difficult for the consumer to recognize, because they simply “hijack” the company names, logos or entire websites of real firewood companies – without their knowledge. Monika Haugg, who has been selling firewood for over 25 years, also had to find out: “Our website was suddenly somehow on a huge platform. Someone copied our data and simply entered their account number. People ordered via WhatsApp and received a confirmation. Of course. And then people waited for their wood and then called us to find out where the wood was.”
A possible indication that the offer is fraudulent could already be the low price, explains the police: “If the price for the goods that I want to buy is not realistic, then the warning lights have to go on. Because it is if the price is too cheap, then of course it encourages the customer to buy quickly here. And that’s exactly what the scammers want,” says Ferraro.
Personal conversation secures
Timber dealer Monika Haugg is now warning of the scammers on her website. And she points out: “You have to talk to your timber dealer, exchange a few sentences. You can’t order wood via WhatsApp, that’s not possible.”
In the end, Manuel Seifried, the cheated customer, did the same: “In the end we came back to our old timber dealer, who is from here. Thank God he still had the delivery for us. We had to wait a little longer because of course he did too has a lot of work. But thanks to him we can now get wood again.”
He didn’t get a bargain – but his stock of wood for the coming winter is replenished.