Craigslist = Scammers

Tell him to make it easy on himself and just sent the exact amount of CASH.

What they want is a home address.

Accept the offer.

Ask them to send check to local FedEx station (give address) marked "Hold for pick up".

Trust me, they will go away.

BTDT

Lew

On 9/8/2009 6:36 AM Charlie Self spake thus:

You already made a mistake there.

I advise all my friends and clients to follow the #1 rule when posting to Craigslist: never ever give out *any* contact info in the posting. No phone #s, certainly no addresses!, no real email addresses, nothing.

If you use their email anonymizing feature, you're safe and can then use discretion and common sense to filter out the scammers from the legit buyers.

Probably true, David, but it doesn't bother me a whole lot to tell scammers to go piss up a rope.

The oddity is, I've never once gotten a phone call from one of them. It's always email, through the anonymizing feature.

same here - last friday i put up a home gym for sale (to make room for my inherited woodworking eq) and all i got was the generic "i wish muchly to purchases your item" and will send a cashiers check, and someone will come pick up the "item".

yeah, right - a 4-station home gym, buying it sight unseen, and they will just come and "pick it up".

craigslist could be so great if it weren't overrun by these guys.....

Exactly David. Never give out any personal information and use the anon email feature only. I've sold a ton of items on the crailist this year including an entire living room of furniture, no problem. Of course I don't give out any personal info and I merely delete trash emails that are obviously spam/scams. Why even respond to them? `Casper

On 9/9/2009 4:28 AM Charlie Self spake thus:

Well, the thing is, this type of scamming is more than just an annoyance. 'Round 'heah in Oakland recently there was a string of home robberies (or burglaries, forget which) by thieves who answered Craigslist ads for vehicles for sale, where the sellers had stupidly given out contact information in the listings.

We don't get too much of that around here. For one thing, there are fatter pickings near Roanoke and Lynchburg, and inside the cities. For another, stealing from people living in the country isn't really safe.