Stomper loses $465 over Nintendo Switch 2 that never arrived after using PayNow instead of Carousell’s feature
A Carousell buyer said he was scammed after he paid $465 for a Nintendo Switch 2 that was not delivered.
Stomper Farhan had made the PayNow payment via a QR code on March 29 at 9pm. The seller messaged that the game console would be delivered before 1am that night.
But at 12.11am, Farhan received another message from the seller: “Hi, sorry — you won’t be able to receive it tonight. I just got a message from the rider saying he ran into some issues and would prefer to deliver it tomorrow morning instead.”
The seller, whose username was “laffxtdillm”, added that the Switch would be delivered before 10am.
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That was the last message the Stomper got from the seller. The game console never arrived. Farhan made a police report on March 30.
He said: “I am very frustrated as $465 is quite a huge amount of money.”
In response to a Stomp query, the police confirmed a report was lodged, adding that investigations are ongoing.
The seller has since been suspended by Carousell following a dispute unrelated to the Stomper.
“When I saw the suspension, I reported my case to Carousell as well,” said Farhan, but he did not believe suspending the seller was a good thing.
“You can’t get your money back,” he explained. “Furthermore, the seller can easily create a new account and post again to scam another buyer.”
The Stomper doubts he would buy anything via Carousell in future.
“I’d rather go a shop to get it instead. It’s not safe any more and sellers can’t be trusted,” he said.
When contacted by Stomp, a Carousell spokesperson said its investigation shows that the Farhan made the payment directly to the seller, instead of using Carousell’s payment feature.
“To avoid such scams, we strongly encourage our users to use our platform’s safety features to transact,” the spokesperson told Stomp on April 10.
“Buyers can specifically look for listings that have the ‘Buy’ button with Buyer Protection enabled. This feature holds payment first and releases it to the seller only after the buyer confirms that the item has been received. If not, we will refund the money back to the buyer.”
However, transactions made through other payment methods are not covered by this protection.
Regarding the Stomper’s concern about the suspended seller creating new accounts, Carousell said it has strengthened the use of Singpass verification as an identity check when high-risk activities are detected on the account.
Should the account be suspended for fraud, Carousell can ban the associated Singpass and suspend all related accounts linked to that Singpass. Any future attempts to create or verify a new account using that same Singpass identity will be blocked.
“While we continue to strengthen our platform safeguards, we encourage users to stay vigilant while transacting online,” advised the spokesperson.
“Use secure platform payment features where available or meet in person to deal for high-value items before making payment.”
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