Congo-african-grey.org

[paulhanlon]

It seems like a scam to me but thats just my opinion as I have being scamed before with buying a bird now I will only buy from a genuine breeder or a rescue shelter the prices for these birds seem to good to be true in my eyes

 

[Thefishknot3]

WOW! Yesterday I was reading an article on "Birdchannel.com" and saw that ad. They were advertising very inexpensive CAG's. The cheapest being $200 for a (get this) DNA sexed, micro chipped 3-5 month old CAG. The price went up with the age of the bird. Delivery was incredibly cheap and the huge cages, they said the bird shipped in ( didn't understand that) was available for purchase other wise you had to send the cage back by the delivery comp. I was going to ask you guys what you thought but I see most of you have seen similar or the same advertisement. I filled out the "reservation" form just to see. Don't worry I didn't reveal any valuable information. So I get a message back asking me for information that was already stated on the reservation form along with more probing questions. I have to agree it screams SCAM!!!!!!!!!
Here's a copy of their site's address..... Check it out!
African Grey Parrots For Sale.

 

[Alisana]

It seems like a scam to me but thats just my opinion as I have being scamed before with buying a bird now I will only buy from a genuine breeder or a rescue shelter the prices for these birds seem to good to be true in my eyes

WOW! Yesterday I was reading an article on "Birdchannel.com" and saw that ad. They were advertising very inexpensive CAG's. The cheapest being $200 for a (get this) DNA sexed, micro chipped 3-5 month old CAG. The price went up with the age of the bird. Delivery was incredibly cheap and the huge cages, they said the bird shipped in ( didn't understand that) was available for purchase other wise you had to send the cage back by the delivery comp. I was going to ask you guys what you thought but I see most of you have seen similar or the same advertisement. I filled out the "reservation" form just to see. Don't worry I didn't reveal any valuable information. So I get a message back asking me for information that was already stated on the reservation form along with more probing questions. I have to agree it screams SCAM!!!!!!!!!
Here's a copy of their site's address..... Check it out!
African Grey Parrots For Sale.

I did a bit of digging around; if you have a look at my posts on the front page, you'll see why.

OK. Yup. I'm calling scam.

Reasons:
1.
The image on this page:

African Grey Parrots For Sale.

Matches this website with a Reverse Image Search.

Felix Lankester – Limbe Wildlife Centre

Image was attached to the following article:

African grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus) seizure in Cameroon update: Felix Lankester

Category: Bush meat, Cameroon, endangered species, Felix Lankester, illegal trade
Date: November 6th 2008
By: limbewildlifecentre
The aftermath of the seizure of 1227 African grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) from Douala Airport, Cameroon, back in December 2007 is still consuming much of our time and resources. Despite having released over 900 parrots back into the wild, we still have approximately 100 birds left. Back in February 2008, with assistance from the World Parrot Trust, we removed the damaged wing feathers from hundreds of parrots and of these approximately 200 have successfully re-grown their feathers and have been released in to the forests around Limbe. The remaining 100 birds have not yet re-grown their feathers and are still living with us at the Limbe Wildlife Centre. Some of these birds may never re-grow their damaged feathers and will remain flightless, whilst others, we hope, will eventually recover their feathers and will be able to fly off.

2.
Registry information. Why say that you are a US-based site when its registered in Australia? It would make sense to use a US based server.

3.
The CITES/Import thing I mentioned above.

4.
Key words listing:

Hyacinth Macaw Parrot for Adoption
parrots
African grey Parrots
grey parrots
parrots for adoption

I find it dodgy they have a hyacinth in their key words.

5.
Their facebook site doesn't exist via search.

Look at this:

<span class="connect_widget_not_connected_text">3,878 people like this. Be the first of your friends.</span>

Their "like statistics" are just typed! It's not even LINKED to their self proclaimed facebook widget!

 

[Alisana]

That was a lot of good info, is there anything we can do to report these people so others don't get scammed?

I'm not familiar with the laws and regulations overseas; but in Australia we have the ACCC and ScamWatch (SCAMwatch home)

Given the registry information (saying it was registered in Australia), I would probably lodge a case with ScamWatch regardless, however they may need proof that a scam has taken place.

At the very least, we can protect our members here. Given they have over 200 sites registered on the same server, my guess is that even if that site is taken down, chances are, they'll just open up a new site.

I'll have to look into later though - about to head off to do some audits.

Just lodged a complaint. Given that the site was registered in Queensland, the ACCC should be able to look into seeing as both the register and the site domain are hosted in Australia.

May I stress that no one allow themselves to get duped by sites like this! If it's too good to be true, it is. And don't listen to "sob stories" of:

"Oh, I can't send it today, I'm very ill, I'll send it next week" ,
"I'm in hopsital now. I'm so sorry, I'll send it after I'm discharged.",
"looks like I won't be discharged for a while I have <insert terminal illness>, I'll transfer your money back"
"It didn't arrive? That's strange, wait a week. It was an international transfer, they take longer"
*contact ceases*
By this time, it makes it very hard for services such as PayPal or your bank to reverse the charge as they have set times to do it. (E.g. PayPal is 45 days to make a claim). Scammers play on people's emotions and use this to their advantage to gain time to dodge the "claim back" period. Don't let yourselves be fooled.

I also wouldn't recommend contacting them either. If they email you back, emails can contain malicious code/scripts/etc that can install keyloggers or trojans on your computer to grab your confidential data. Even looking at an image can download something to your computer. Report the site, close it and walk away. It's not worth the risk, nor are the scammers worth your attention. (see below from ACCC)

Please note: The ACCC (SCAMwatch) does not have an address for you to forward scam/spam emails to as these emails often contain malicious software and viruses which could infect our computer systems. SCAMwatch recommends you delete these emails rather than forwarding them on. You can provide details of the content of scam emails in the box above.