Tell me about your ACNH scam stories

[PugLovex]

not sure if this counts, but i let people come over since monty was crafting an ironwood table and someone had stolen all the tips people left for me. i was so upset not only at myself but for the people who left them, i should have been more responsible.

 

[usa-chan]

not really a scam, but just generally a waste of time.

i've started selling diys at nookazon because selling is a faster process over there, and i really need these diys out of my basement. around 4 am EST for me, i accepted this person's offer of nmt for the wooden bookshelf diy that i was selling. the offer was made two minutes before i accepted it. for those who don't know how nookazon works, once you accept an offering for your listing, you have the choice to immediately send a dodo code so they can come to your island or ask them for a dodo code. i chose to ask them for the dodo, and after thirty minutes of radio silence, i sent them a message saying that i was going to sleep but i would be up in a few hours.

when i woke up, i did send another message and saw that they've been trading with other people based on the reviews on their page. no reply whatsoever. literally hours after i sent the message, they cancelled their offer. i was so annoyed that i wasted my time waiting for this person who didn't even have the decency to say that they didn't want the diy anymore.

i left a 1-star review detailing everything that happened, and they left a 1-star review back, literally just stating, "U know". i don't know if they're trying to intimidate me to update my review with that dumb little comment. i did end up updating it though; i added on, "also this person likes to revenge review even though it's their fault lol"

normally, i'm understanding if mishaps occur during trading, but they've ended up wasting my time, and i lost other offers thanks to the huge time gap.

 

[vicutie]

I've never been scammed personally but I've witnessed someone getting scammed! Right in front of everyone
The person that got scammed was nice enough to host high turnip prices and allowed multiple visits without asking for tips
My friend left him a 99k bells tip and someone just ran up, picked up the bag of bells, and left--in front of the host and other visitors
Some people just have no shame

 

[Sharksheep]

not really a scam, but just generally a waste of time.

i've started selling diys at nookazon because selling is a faster process over there, and i really need these diys out of my basement. around 4 am EST for me, i accepted this person's offer of nmt for the wooden bookshelf diy that i was selling. the offer was made two minutes before i accepted it. for those who don't know how nookazon works, once you accept an offering for your listing, you have the choice to immediately send a dodo code so they can come to your island or ask them for a dodo code. i chose to ask them for the dodo, and after thirty minutes of radio silence, i sent them a message saying that i was going to sleep but i would be up in a few hours.

when i woke up, i did send another message and saw that they've been trading with other people based on the reviews on their page. no reply whatsoever. literally hours after i sent the message, they cancelled their offer. i was so annoyed that i wasted my time waiting for this person who didn't even have the decency to say that they didn't want the diy anymore.

i left a 1-star review detailing everything that happened, and they left a 1-star review back, literally just stating, "U know". i don't know if they're trying to intimidate me to update my review with that dumb little comment. i did end up updating it though; i added on, "also this person likes to revenge review even though it's their fault lol"

normally, i'm understanding if mishaps occur during trading, but they've ended up wasting my time, and i lost other offers thanks to the huge time gap.

You can get that review remove if you message the mods I think. There are rules about negative reviews so they can't just spam another user with bad reviews

 

[usa-chan]

You can get that review remove if you message the mods I think. There are rules about negative reviews so they can't just spam another user with bad reviews

unfortunately, they'll only dispute reviews if it had inappropriate/abusive language, commenting on listings/prices without an agreed trade, or trying to contact the user without an agreed trade. i don't mind the review, but thank you anyway!

 

[mintycream]

Haven’t been scammed yet but I have had people waste my time. Usually it’s the lack of communication. I had an offer on Nookazon the other day for a diy recipe which I accept and sent dodo within 5 minutes but the person never responded to my messages until the next day claiming it was late and they had to head to bed. Waited a good hr too. Why offer when you can’t do the trade right away-just defeats the purpose of the platform. Then he asked if I still had it and I said yes but never heard from him again. -_- And today I had one where I won a giveaway on discord. I asked the person who’s island and she said she preferred to delivery to me. I replied right away saying I’ll open and sent her the dodo. 30 minutes passed, she finally replied, apologized and asked whether I was still open. Then she said she’ll come after watching a stream. I said yes I was still open and to lmk when you can come. 3 hours later, she replies “giveaway is canceled. I’m busy. I have stuff to do.” SERIOUSLY? Doesn’t even offer to arrange another time to get the item. So it was all a hoax to begin with. Sorry for the rant but had to get it out

 

[Globes216]

I’ve personally not been scammed but I always make sure to double check the map if I’m adopting a villager. Only because I adopted Willow once and she had a different house exterior (I assume from the glitch) and the buyer wanted the NMT first so I made sure to look on the map to make sure Willow was actually in town

 

[bikky]

I agreed a trade on a very common marketplace for my Roald that was moving out. as the listing had been out there for a while I accepted the first offer which was a pretty good one (80k bells and 200NMTs). the first red flag though was the user had no reviews and had just joined but as I also once started with no reviews I was hoping to help them get started too.
I opened the gates and sent my dodo but then received a message that they’d be coming in 5 mins. thinking I had some extra time I walked away from the airport and went home to empty my inventory and while doing so the notification that someone was coming appeared as usual. I then messaged them in game that I’d be right over but there was no reply and when I got to my airport I did not see anyone. I then searched all over for the scammer while asking them to respond but without any answer and next thing I know they were leaving my island. although my instinct told me to disconnect I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt that something had gone wrong with the network so I let them go. But when I went to check if Roald was still in boxes, he’d already moved out and I never got the agreed payment for him. I then also noticed one of my duplicate recipes I had placed on display for my trades had disappeared.
I contacted the trader on the site where we agreed the trade and they told me something went wrong with their switch. but when I pointed out that Roald had moved out which wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t talk to him, I never got any response so I reported them. the whole thing was just so strange but I learned some lessons:
1. make sure you’re ready to receive people before opening your island
2. never leave your airport unattended
3. block off areas you don’t want ppl to access
4. follow your instinct
It’s sad it’s come to this for a chill game like ACNH and i know i haven’t lost anything so important i lose sleep over it but just knowing there are ppl out there that are like ‘I’m going to scam someone on Animal Crossing today because i can’ just baffles me.

 

[Stikki]

Well this sketchy looking guy turned up one time and tried to flog some fake art. Dunno what that was all about.

 

[Alyx]

A couple of weeks ago I was scammed on Nookazon. I was selling two wedding flower stands and someone made an offer for my wishlist items. I trusted them... they gave me the wrong colors for every item offered (non-customizable). I thought it was an innocent mistake, so I attempted to message them and was blocked. I reported them to Nookazon and their account is gone now. The rest of the time I've had no issues - I've done almost 500 trades on Nookazon and there was just one bad egg.

 

[VanitasFan26]

I nearly got scammed when trying to get the Sanrio set. I want everyone to know I tried to get the whole Sanrio set since March but everytime I make an offer its always "Nook Mile Tickets" I've seen people put out listings for these items and they want to charge like 50 to 100 nook mile tickets. I find myself just offering like more nook mile tickets just to get the item itself. I know it seemed ridiculous, but no matter how hard I tried to be reasonable I keep getting rejected because my offer was low. I had to keep grinding nook mile tickets like crazy and THEN I can get the sets on (site that must not be named). However, trying to get them is a pain. I get my offer accepted and yet I don't get any communication that if they want to go to my island or if they want me to come to their island. I waited 20 minutes and they never got back to me.

Before anyone says anything I did check the reviews and these reviews were really high for sellers so I was going for them and avoiding the other ones that had low ratings. I managed to get some of the stuff, until one time this seller offered me one of the items that I wanted. I came to their island and I saw they had gifts for me. Then next thing I know they wanted 100 nook mile tickets from me, which was a lie, because my offer was 10 nook mile tickets for a Hello Kitty Chair, but apparently this person didn't tell me at the last second so they must've made a mistake. Feeling frustrated I told them "I just want the Hello Kitty Chair" and then this person decided to become demanding saying "Look just take all of the Hello Kitty items and give me your 100 nook mile tickets". I decided to leave and not do the trade and they gave me a 1 star review for being "rude"

Pfft this is why I quit (site must not be named). I swear some people on that site can be very greedy, manipulative, and the way they try to scam you out of your nook mile tickets when you are not getting what you have been offered. It has happened to me so many times last year that I am not willing to do it. So I decided to bite the bullet and buy the Sanrio cards. Sorry for the long rant, but I just had to express this.

 

[Jaco]

The first time I ever opened my island up, I announced it on twitter. Some nice people came over and dropped things like stars and even taught me how to run (I didn't know how to run for the first at least 4 weeks of the game). But some randoms came over and stole everything that people dropped for me, shook all my money trees, etc.

Not too bad, all in all.

 

[Kg1595]

The first time I ever opened my island up, I announced it on twitter. Some nice people came over and dropped things like stars and even taught me how to run (I didn't know how to run for the first at least 4 weeks of the game). But some randoms came over and stole everything that people dropped for me, shook all my money trees, etc.

Not too bad, all in all.

I’m sorry that you had to go through that. I had a similar situation last year when I invited several people over to collect fruit from my island. Two people decided to initiate a trade of some sort on my island during this, and when one of them dropped a ton of bells for whatever the trade was for, the other person stole them and high-tailed it to my airport. I was watching the convo close to the entrance, so I tried to block the person from leaving, but they were able to slip by (I don’t know what I could have done to get the thief to return the goods anyway, but hey, I tried).

I felt really terrible for the girl who lost the bells, and luckily I had a spare of whatever she was trading for that I gave her for nothing, but after that episode, I stopped inviting more than one person onto my island if they were not people I know. It’s sad, but I felt so gross afterwards that there was a theft on my island and I could do nothing to stop it.

As for the “site” everyone else mentions, I have had few issues with trading, and generally find most people pleasant. That said, I read a person’s reviews before accepting offers, and only deal with people I think are on the up and up. It is really sad that people act like that in a game like Animal Crossing.

 

[peachycrossing9]

Hmm, I do remember one occasion where I wasn't scammed, it was just someone been a dirty thief, but it still sucked.

This was in the early stages of the game where people coming over to get shooting stars and talk to Celeste was quite popular. I had opened my island up for that one night on Discord. It was all going quite smooth for the most part, and I was letting in 3 people at a time to wish on shooting stars and talk to Celeste. Since Celeste was wandering around my island wherever she wanted, I couldn't really fence off parts of my island I didn't want people to go. (I didn't think to trap Celeste, because I'm stupid xD) So I was just telling people that they could go find Celeste and talk to her, but please don't touch anything that may have been on the ground. (Me thinking people would listen to this request.)

Basically, mid-way through having my island open, I had one person be a real pain, and she was running through my flowers. I gave her a warning and told her to stop and she did. I thought she wouldn't do anything else after that, but I was very wrong. When she went off to find Celeste, she went to the far end of one of my beaches where I had some spare DIY's laying out for a friend to come and collect.... Well she took over half of them and then left through the - button. I knew it was her that had done it, because the other two people at the time were with me wishing on stars.

I probably should have just kicked her right after the flowers incident, or at least followed her when she went to talk to Celeste. But oh well. This was the only time I had encountered someone doing this and it hasn't happened again since. I'm also now a lot more cautious.

 

[Lavulin98]

I almost got scammed big time back in the day when Raymond and Judy hype was all the rage. Basically I was supposed to trade nmts and rare items for judy.

The host waited for me to drop my items, then they would get an unexpected visitor (cordinated thru chat or real life) to come and force the game to save, so once the game is saved, to kick me out and keep all the items while I'm sent back to my island empty handed.

I smelled fishy fishy being aware of scams before so after i finished dropping items, i would lock myself into dialogue screens to prevent the visitor to land. it happened 3 times in total, this same scenario until i realized its a scam and i reported the person and end of stuff.

While it was happening, i just knew the basics of the etiqquete, you're not supposed to save the game until the trader has spoke with the animal. So i just watched out for that and caught them red-handed.

 

[Hsn97]

It wasn’t a scam as much as someone just being rude. I hade my town open because Leif was visiting and so was Celeste. Fenced of an area so people couldn’t run all over my town (this was before diving) and basically said people could come and go as they liked and I was just gonna be AFK.
On over sight on my behalf was my Take1Leave1 stall by the gate. The stall was jam packed with different items and resources and the idea was that players could pick something up as long as they put something else of a similar value back down. There were signs explaining this. Someone, I don’t know who, went and took everything and didn’t leave anything in turn. It really put me off doing anything like that again. You like to think you can trust people. Guess I was proven wrong.

 

[Sid]

So I was hoping one of you could give me some insight on this. I met someone on discord who was offering deweeding/deflower/detree services . I messaged them asking what they asked in return and they said just to keep the flowers. I told them it was a new island so they know there won't be any hybrids. Is there any way this is a scam or that I'm in any potential danger here? Just seems really cheap for what will be quite a bit of work.

 

[kemdi]

So I was hoping one of you could give me some insight on this. I met someone on discord who was offering deweeding/deflower/detree services . I messaged them asking what they asked in return and they said just to keep the flowers. I told them it was a new island so they know there won't be any hybrids. Is there any way this is a scam or that I'm in any potential danger here? Just seems really cheap for what will be quite a bit of work.

Possibly. Weeding should be fine, but for deflowering/detreeing, it would mean that the person coming over would need to be able to use a shovel on your island, which would require you to add them as a best friend to your console. But this would mean that not only could they dig up flowers and trees, but they could also dig up anything you have buried, including fossils, some mushrooms, etc., and destroy rocks. If your island is new, there probably won't be much to worry about, but if the thought of that bothers you, considering doing the deflowering/detreeing yourself, getting players you already trust to help you, or just monitoring the person when/if they come over for the service.