I had a first swap with this collector coming from India on 2019, everything went well even if I received his coins with a huge delay.
I rated him but he didn't do the same with me, He received the coins and then disappeared.
Early this year he asked for a new swap and we agreed it with some valuable coins from both sides. He informed to have sent the envelope on February but He didn't provide a tracking number so I waited to send mine. On April He informed me, with lot of excuses, that He was able to send only on that moment. He provided a tracking code but this was in-existent into the system. I asked many times to have update, a lot of excuses but nothing concrete, when I asked a picture of registered mail He disappeared again. Fortunately I have not yet sent my coins!
I got many information from Him from other collectors, some of them have never received his coins. He receive theirs but then ask to give a good evaluation before sending his and maybe doesn't send nothing.
I had some information from other Indian collectors that He probably swap fake coins for rare coins, to be verified.
Anyway, probably this post needs to be commented from people who have been cheated from Him, I just want to make all aware about possible fraud.
I also suggest Numista moderators to verify why he has done 75 swap and has received all evaluations when He given only 50, I think this is not honest and not respectful of Numista rules.
If I may say it; I think it is not nice to mention somebodies name in public,
like you are doing.
There are many ways, what can possible be a very good reason for his behaviour,
maybe he is even dead...
Everybody who make swaps encounters once in a while a bad experience,
but I think the solution should lay more in a personal approach, so outstanders will not put
their nose in your private affairs ( like I am doing now...:))
That is my opinion.
I have just created this post to let all collectors be aware about a possible fraud.
This person is alive, I'm just messaging with Him but I heard several people who gave me bad feedback about Him, specially some from same Country.
Also looking to the feedback He received on Numista, some are not so nice. I guess He is doing swap always in a not fair way.
It's also not nice that He doesn't give feedback to others, maybe using this point to force people to send first when You should provide evidence of expedition together.
My post doesn't want to be a court of the inquisition, just a way to clear unpleasant situation.
I hope people who were involved on swap with Him can leave useful comment to help this.
Unfortunately the same experience here with Imonindia.
We haven't given it a bad rating yet as we are still hoping to get the coins sent to us.
The exchange closed in October, a month later he received our coins and gave us a good review. Also we were told he could not ship due to the corona pandemic. Each time after that there was a different excuse.
Finally got the message in March that half of the coins had been shipped, with a tracking number. The number was not recognized and we still have not received any coins.
We have been really good and generous to him. We can't believe he tricked us like that.
Hi
Unfortunately a very bad experience with Imonindia.
The swap closed in July. Of course, I suggested that we send the letters and the coins at the same time.
But in the months that followed, there was a different new excuse each time.
Since nothing happens for several months and it doesn’t seem to be happening (he doesn’t even respond to recent messages), I don’t think it makes sense to wait any longer. I'm sorry, but I don't recommend it to anyone! Interestingly, he was able to respond immediately to a negative rate!
He has received my coins but nothing from him in over 6 months. He does not reply to messages so today have left a negative rating to see if that makes him reply.
I would not trust this person.
Hi, I am always open to swaps but please be patient as my work is very busy at present.
One information about Imonindia from a trustable Indian collector:
"It is not possible for letters not to be trackable as per the process all bar codes are scanned in the postal system . If there is scanning issue then at least the receipt with code and proper date/time should be there.
One Indian collector has cheated a few of my friends telling that code is not trackable . It is lmonindia . He is polite so has escaped getting negative rating, He usually gives a fake number, waits for coins to arrive to him first and then he only sends coins after many reminders telling there is problem in post .Some of his India coins are copies made in China.
Has he left rating for your first swap? If he has not then if you rate him badly he he will leave bad rating for your first swap.
I had done swap with lmonindia and faced problems, he also insists you to rate first even if you sent first. Since I am in India I realised he was telling lies. ImonIndia has also cheated people in Ukraine , Monaco etc.
Getting coins from him will be a major headache with lots of follow up. Imonindia does not rate the person and blackmails the other person to give a good rating telling otherwise he will leave poor rating, Which he why he gets good ratings . Check with nest and the other swappers"
Quote: "Ramons78"Some information from really trustable Indian collectors:
"i also have 2 times bad experiences with Kolkata state people ... they create trust and start defaulting /scamming
on top of it .. post office employees in that state steal the package/coins from both incoming and outgoing packages.. from russian and taiwan package some times enter India through Kolkata, 3 out of 6 times .. i lost coins/packages without a trace.
general rule: north part of India, ask them to send 1st "
Greetings.
I do not agree and, on the contrary, I have the opposite experience. I send to Kolkata ( Indie) regularly several times a year, for several years and last in August. (even if I don't have an exchange record) -But I change between my friend from Kolkata.
All shipments absolutely accurately and always delivered on time to the address, I even sent it in August so that my friend would receive a birthday shipment -and mail between the Czech Republic and India delivered in the city of Kolkata was delayed by one day as I calculated their reliability by 14 days via Delhi.
And what are you talking about the inhabitants of the city -you know how many people live there? it is an unjust and bad statement.
My experience is a completely reliable postal service.
I was robbed of a shipment in London at the airport, Moscow there is a very lengthy customs system , and I would not send a postcard to Kosovo and it would disappear -and also many other unreliable postal services of other pseudo services of states.
,, So one thief and an unreliable person he can't make a picture of everyone,,
I stand for my friend absolutely, absolutely reliable and honest.
‘Don’t let the actions of a few determine the way you feel about an entire group’. That’s my advice from a YouTube channel that I watch about scams.
Hi to whoever is reading this. Did you know that TYPEWRITER (on a QWERTY keyboard) is the longest word you can type using only the letters on one row of the keyboard.
To be honest reading stuff like this, it makes my blood boil.
Scammers from India are a stereotype and when they have India in their name makes it worse.
But I am sure most swappers in India are honest people and get tarred by the brush of the dishonest ones.
The same thing happened on Stampboards, a person scammed a Western person and turned out to be "Freebie begging vacuum" - these are people who ask several members for free stamps and welcome packs and play the "Third world" poverty angle. One turned out to be impersonating some actress but turned out to be a very well off person in Mumbai, they were outed and complained and played the racist card. They sent some stamps back eventually - but they all turned out to be the cheapest and nastiest definitives (Like the 2, 3, and 5 Paisa definitives) all heavily worn.
However a bunch of Australians started bashing all Indians calling them scammers and then a group of well regarded Indian members fought back and demanded apologies - they relented reluctantly as the manager of Stampboards is a major right wing Aussie racist.
The fact remains is NOT ALL Indian or 3rd world people are scammers, many are limited by financial means (The average income in India is $1500 a year - but most people collecting coins and things would be in the richer class - I guess incomes around $10 - $100k a year. Yes scams exist - but you have just the same issue with being ripped off by a white person in a European country.
Plus the postal service in India is notoriously slow and no doubt you have a few light fingered employees - again senders can not be blamed for that. Then again with the decline of Postal services and Post Offices worldwide, most places are just as bad or getting there.
This is sad, but it is not just because the sender is Indian, this did not work out.
I love coins. Especially silver, gold and anything really old.
Member of the Royal Numismatic Society of New Zealand and the Auckland Numismatic Society
Quote: "Ramons78"Some information from really trustable Indian collectors:
"i also have 2 times bad experiences with Kolkata state people ... they create trust and start defaulting /scamming
on top of it .. post office employees in that state steal the package/coins from both incoming and outgoing packages.. from russian and taiwan package some times enter India through Kolkata, 3 out of 6 times .. i lost coins/packages without a trace.
general rule: north part of India, ask them to send 1st "
"It is not possible for letters not to be trackable as per the process all bar codes are scanned in the postal system . If there is scanning issue then at least the receipt with code and proper date/time should be there.
One Indian collector has cheated a few of my friends telling that code is not trackable . It is lmonindia . He is polite so has escaped getting negative rating, He usually gives a fake number, waits for coins to arrive to him first and then he only sends coins after many reminders telling there is problem in post .Some of his India coins are copies made in China.
Has he left rating for your first swap? If he has not then if you rate him badly he he will leave bad rating for your first swap.
I had done swap with lmonindia and faced problems, he also insists you to rate first even if you sent first. Since I am in India I realised he was telling lies. ImonIndia has also cheated people in Ukraine , Monaco etc.
Getting coins from him will be a major headache with lots of follow up. Imonindia does not rate the person and blackmails the other person to give a good rating telling otherwise he will leave poor rating, Which he why he gets good ratings . Check with nest and the other swappers"
I do not see the point of this irrelevant information. You got swindled; it happens, it sucks, leave the guy a bad rating and move on. As someone who lived a very significant portion of their life growing up in Bombay, India, I absolutely don't appreciate this type of implicit stereotyping by quoting random stuff from "Some information from really trustable Indian collectors". Did these "really trustable Indian collectors" even give you permission to publish their private conversation with you in an open public forum?!
Next time, do your due dilligence, not just when swapping with someone from India, but anywhere in the world. There are nasty, unscrupulous individuals from Canada to New Zealand and every country/people in between. That said, I hope you continue to swap and build good experiences because coin collecting and swapping with people across the world is such an amazing thing!
Have a nice day.
Principles of safe exchange they are already given here, published on the web many times. Who ever sends first when it is better to avoid the exchange and so on.
Our hobby is not understood by the majority of the population in all states in the same way, for some nations, it's really just an unnecessary child's play and a matter of investing wealthy families. An example is the largest countries in the world, why there are probably so few active collectors?
,, Sometimes it seems to me that here the whole forum is staffed only by collectors from-North Korea -and also changes perhaps the most SWAPs in the world,, -----So I pretty much killed that!
There are honest people everywhere and scum everywhere -only some are some more and others less, according to the history of the nation, its customs and the upbringing of children.
And the same goes for state services to the population, State by state other . The EU is trying to unify the service ( postal delivery), and overall it is working great between countries.
However, the conditions of post offices around the world are changing to our detriment of collectors. You see it for yourself here North America changes coins only by majority only among themselves, The EU is also better among itself. In the future, I think we will be even more separated. The prices of services also exceed our capabilities and the prices of 2,000-year-old Roman coins are still listed at $ 2-5. Our prices are 30 years old ........
Now, according to my experience, the main postal system in India is really world-class, and I will give a specific example here for other post offices.
Czech Republic -Kolkata ,, India ,,:
This is a service and the others are just bullshit, exemplary factual monitoring.
I think that the original purpose of this forum has been lost.
I had very good experiences with Indian collectors and everybody of us knows what can happen with the postal service there (probably all of us has lost at least one package from/to there).
My intention was not to categorize people and It's very far from me the idea the generalize single events.
I'll then remove some comments that can be misunderstood.
Please keep the focus on the subject, I created this forum to make everybody aware about one single collector: "Imonindia"
who has already scammed several people and is well know among trustable Indian collectors.
I just don't want that this happens again!
I tried to inform Numista referees to put a warning message on his profile but I didn't get answer.
Everybody be aware about the risk to swap with Him and ask Him to send first to avoid any bad surprise.
When you go to his profile, there is no warning now, but when I go to a swap that was negotiated earlier but we had not agreed on, there is a warning:
"ATTENTION :
THIS MEMBER HAS BEEN DETECTED BY NUMISTA MODERATORS FOR SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITIES. PLEASE BE VERY CAREFUL IF YOU STILL WANT TO SWAP WITH HIM."
So, he has already been flagged. And after reading all this stories about him, I am happy that we did not agree on the swap.
I recently mailed a small Qty of Silver coins to Bangladesh these where a gift and tracked in the UK but as soon as the package leaves the UK the Tracking no is useless sorry to say the package never arrived as we presume someone half inched it in transit.
Quote: "yvon"If I may say it; I think it is not nice to mention somebodies name in public,
like you are doing.
There are many ways, what can possible be a very good reason for his behaviour,
maybe he is even dead...
Everybody who make swaps encounters once in a while a bad experience,
but I think the solution should lay more in a personal approach, so outstanders will not put
their nose in your private affairs ( like I am doing now...:))
That is my opinion.
Mentioning by name is an excellent idea. This gives other swappers a little warning about a potential bad trade If the guy is for real he will respond to the post (as he seems hesitant to do)
If you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything
