Tips for authenticity.

Chloe wants my attention. Notice this was taken around Thanksgiving...see the turkey!

Today, I received a call from a potential puppy owner from out of state. She asked a question and she is not the first one to ask me.

  She asked me how can one tell if an online add is real or not?  I think the bottom line is, see it, touch it and then buy it.

But if that is not possible, I added this post to give some guidelines concerning the matter.

Allow me to open with one of my experiences. If you don't care about that part, skip to the bullets below for the tips.

True Story Time:

 I Call It: My Turn To Be Bamboozled, Lesson Learned!!

I tried to sell my cell phone on-line. It was an older model and I was told I could get a better price if I sold on-line.  I really didn't have any bites for 3 days.

Then.....

I received a better offer than what I was asking for!  Admittedly, I was naive and fell for it. I packaged my phone and went to mail it.  The person who was buying it kept texting me things, like:

"Have you got my address right?"

"Okay, are you sending it right now?"

"Go ahead and put it in the mail and send me a picture of the receipt and then I will send you the money."

The last text is the one that got me!  I was like....oh no.
Unfortunately, I had just paid to have it mailed.  So, I asked the post master to hand me my package back.   I thought if I could send the picture of the receipt and make sure I had the money, it would be fine to mail it.
I took a picture of the receipt and attached  it ot a text, while I stood in the Post office.  The "Buyer" said great the money is already sent.  But I checked my PayPal.
 Sure enough, the money promised did not go into my PayPal. And never did it.

Feeling foolish and depressed with how bad people can be, I got my money back and took my phone with me.  I never did sell that phone.

I still got a few annoying texts after that-from different numbers!

It wasn't until later, that I learned multiple phone numbers is a really bad sign.

I want to help others avoid that  same pitfall.

Here are my tips, though not full proof, they have helped me.

• Does any of the information seem off in any way? Are there misspellings or conflicting information?  If so,  move on.  It just isn't worth it.
• Is the ad in multiple places, or posted multiple times? Red flag.
• Is the picture difficult to make out? Red flag.
• Also, is a photo to good to be true? Can you see if it was pulled from a random site?  The answer is, yes!!!  I chose a random picture of a blue eared poodle.  Follow the instructions below to see if you can discover where I got the photo! Then try it yourself on something else.
• The following is instructions from google with a photo that I added.  
  1. On any website (or for this example, on the image of the poodle below) , right-click an image and select Copy image address or Copy image location. 
  2. On images.google.com or any Images results page, click Search by image . (make sure you click on the camera!!
     
  3. Click Paste image URL.
  4. Paste the URL you copied into the box.
  5. Click Search by image.
• Search using an image URL 

Back to my own words, once again.

• Is the deal to good to be true?  Then it isn't true.
• Is the seller out of town when you want to stop in for the item?  Do they say they have someone to "drop it off"?  This is a huge red flag!!!! Run away!
• Is the seller able to offer more than 1 photo of an item? If they can't that is another huge red flag!!!
• Are they able to give you clear information concerning the item? Positive
• Does the seller have references? Positive but be cautious.
• Is the seller pushy or urgent? Run away!!!