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Gallery-worldwide.com is your bodyguard
Galley-worldwide.com put forth significant efforts to prevent artists and galleries from fraudulent purchases.
As part of these efforts
- we keep our artists and galleries informed about that issue
- we track an IP address and a location of buyers and senders of all messages regarding your art
- we check and keep the records of suspicious users and proved scammers
- we scrutinize behavior of all users who are trying to contact our exhibitors
- we run analyses to debug all new scammers
All these will help you spot a suspicious buyer.
See an example of a scam and clear messages above.
If you have a buyer, which our system did not define as a scammer, but looks suspicious to you, please report your concern to our support team with a description of why it looks suspicious.
This will help better protect you as well as all others.
Top tips on how to reduce the risk of Internet purchase fraud
- Check Gallery-worldwide.com's Alerts - Whenever you receive 'Message for artist', 'Trade message' or 'Order pay notice' our fraud-protecting system analyzes them for obvious signs of a scammer. See the list of tracking parameters above.
- Contact, Shipping and Credit Card Information - The buyer's contact information should match up with the information they used for the shipping address and the credit card. If this information doesn't match up, then it is a very good sign of a scammer. See examples below.
- Call the Consumer - Usually the most effective way to clear up all confusion is to call the buyer with the phone number they provided. If the number they provided isn't good, then try contacting the consumer via email for a valid phone number.
more tips to help spot scammers
- Use Fraudulent Notices - Place fraudulent notices in your email. Let the customers know that fraudulent orders will be pursued to the fullest extent of the law. By having these notices, it will usually chase off most scammers.
- Document All Contacts - To give yourself greater protection and a bigger fighting chance against a scammer, document all contacts you have. Use caller ID, a voice mailbox and keep all emails to show as proof in fighting your case.
- Check out Your Buyers - If you use the PayPal payment system you have a chance for additional inspections such as (a) Does a buyer have a Confirmed address? (b) What is the buyer's eBay feedback score? (c) Is the buyer's PayPal account Verified?
- Telephone Search - You can use services such as www.anywho.com, which will do a reverse search on a phone number for you. This will allow you to confirm the contact information for the phone number that the buyer has provided.
Information about fraud schemas
Some examples of excuses why the shipping address is different:
... Me and my family are moving from our UK home to Netherlands in our new apartment ...
... We are moving from our South Africa home to our new apartment in London ...
... I am a private agent. ... I have a special client that's setting up a hotel ...
... Let my shipping agent handle receiving ...
See page on Information about fraud schemas and Real fraud examples for more information �
In a nutshell:
Make sure that Contact, Shipping and Credit Card Information are the same. It is the rule of thumb.
Contact buyers by phone and make sure they are buying your artwork for themselves.
Stay away from buyers other than US, Canada and Western Europe.
And ship artwork only after you receive the full payment.
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