Thanks Nunga, there are some bastards around so good effort to make their task tough.

Note to anyone - someone referring to contact someone else by email is likely a scam.

Ask for a pic of the item with a piece of paper with that days date or a random word.

Dont pay an account thats under the name of someone that doesnt match the name of the person you are talking to..

I have updated the terms and conditions for new users that sign up. I don't think this would be seen as hard nosed to genuine members. It doesn't take long to accumulate 40 points. This can be lowered if you think 40 is too much. could drop it down to 20. Points are not posts by the way. you get points for different things. 5 points for creating new posts. 3 points to replying to a post

Just look at it as a reward system from now on. You have to earn the right to access all of the forums features. You can still post and reply to all other topics just not in the for sale and wanted sections. If you want to reach out to someone post a message in the forum. once they get to 40 points they automatically get access to the rest.

Thanks for doing this Nunga.

For the rest of the forum, I've had two scammers in the last two weeks approach me through the private message system offering to sell me items that I had advertised as WTB (see screenshots below).  

In the relatively short time that I've been on this forum I've had a total of four scammers approach me and today after I nearly forked out a considerable amount of money to one of them I approached Nunga to see what could be done to stop this.

It was only the request for me to pay via PayPal that alerted me to what was going on, up until that point the communications had seemed very 'Kiwi' and genuine.

Unfortunately these people are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their approach as time goes by and this needs to be stopped before one of us really does get stung.

I think this is a sensible solution and fully support what Nunga has done.  Hopefully the rest of the regulars will see that this was necessary and a sensible solution has been applied to protect us all.