A deal 'too good to be true” has cost a Tauranga man $1200 and left him with the horrible knowledge he was taken in by a scam.

One of the oldest scamming techniques, the ‘white van speaker scam', has now made its way to Tauranga and comes on the back of cases reported in Auckland and Hamilton during February.

A Tauranga man has been taken in for $1200 recently by two men selling what they claimed to be high-quality home audio equipment, but was in fact cheap knockoffs. It follows similar cases in Auckland and Hamilton during February.

The local man, who has asked to remain anonymous, says he was duped by two men selling home audio equipment out of the back of their white van in the Mega Mitre 10 carpark on Cameron Road last Wednesday.

'They pulled up beside me, got out and said they were installers or something for a media company,” the victim explains. 'They had stereos, home theatre systems and projectors in the back.

'Their line was they were oversupplied and wanted to hock the extras off before returning to the depot - y'know, make something off them otherwise the boss would just return the equipment.”

They said the equipment's brand was Stenmark Media, and claimed the 'high-quality, high-end” home audio equipment was usually sold at retail with prices starting from about $1100.

To back up their story, the victim was shown a website which outlined details about the equipment, and once again, showed the extravagant price tags attached to each item.

He adds: 'That website's been specifically setup for that equipment to show that it's really high-end, high-quality, but it's all bullsh** because it's nothing more than junk.”

The victim says after some haggling he walked away with home audio equipment and 'a deal way too good to be true”, while they walked away with $1200 of his money.

'Eventually I went home and said to my wife ‘look what I just bought', but as soon as she saw the equipment she said ‘you bloody idiot'.

'She went on the internet and showed me other people who had purchased the same equipment in the same way. So sure enough, it was a scam.”

The victim has since laid a complaint with police, but unless the gear was stolen there is not too much they could do other than to advise: ‘buyer beware'.

He describes the two men as being fair skinned, in their mid-to-late 20s, with one being tall and skinny, while the other was short with a chubby face 'who grinned all the time, obviously”.

They were both well-spoken and the victim believes they've had a lot of practice.

'The stuff just flowed off their tongue,” he adds. They had the gift of the gab and it's all well-rehearsed by the sounds of things because of what they were saying, the website, everything.

'I don't expect to get my money back, it's my own damn fault and I feel like a d**k, but I just don't want anyone else to get stung like me.”