AJS & Matchless Owners Club

Hello guys and gals,
I was approached by a certain "Fred Godwill", who responded to my advert in the Spares wanted section. There are some details in his communication which made me suspicious. Does anyone know this guy and can vouch for him? Given the amount of fraud these days, one has to be careful.

Thanks,
Knut

mdt-son wrote: ↑Fri Feb 11, 2022 2:03 pm

Hi Knut.
I expect you are aware that there have been several posts on the Forum referring to the same adverts scams.
Here's the most recent...........

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=28167&p=237558&hil ... ls#p237558

Knut.
There is no "Godwill" on the current membership list.
Your advert for G15 engine plates was placed on the website on 15 October ( but missed the copy deadline by one day) so went in the December magazine. Members can see the advert as soon as it appears on the website but it then became visible to non members on the 24 December and is currently the last wanted ad on the system before it becomes automatically archived.
There was discussion at a previous committee meeting about reducing the time adverts appear to reduce the possible scammers, as generally they are responding to adverts that have become visible to non members. There may be a technical difficulty in achieving this and I will check what has happened at the next committee on the 20th.
I think you would be sensible to be cautious.
Clive
Adverts Editor

Ask him to send you a specific picture of the plates Knut, (front edge perhaps?) to see if he actually has them.

Thanks for your replied, guys. I sent "Fred" a request for more information, especially contact details. He was keen at the outset, now there is utter silence. My gut feeling was probably right - he is a scammer. At least he should know the difference between an AJS M33 and a Matchless G15!

Clive: Just for clarity, what do you mean by "(the mag) became visible to non members on the 24 December" ? It's not distributed freely, is it? Of course someone could have picked up a sample from the recycle bin or the print shop, but .... you probably meant something different?

- Knut

Knut
Non members can currently view, on website, all adverts 3 weeks after they appear in the magazine. Because of the issues around scamming we are looking at automatically removing all adverts at this point so they cannot be seen by non members. This has disadvantages as seeing adverts and the sort of things that can be sourced through members ads does encourage some new members, it also means members ads only appear for a short while on the website and they still may not have what they need.
The advantage would be that scammers crawling the internet would not be able to access old adverts, although if they obtain old mags which regularly appear on ebay they could. Its much less likely the scammer would pay for a mag than look for free on the internet though.
This was proposed at a previous committee meeting but has not yet been implemented, there may be technical issues as I believe the present automatic cut off is by number of pages of adverts not date it appeared. There is a committee meeting tomorrow when progress is on the agenda.
Adverts Editor