Monday, July 02, 2007

craigslist

There's something fishy about people surfing through craigslist.
A few months back I posted our room for rent and we got over 10 emails from people claiming they are female, ages 25-28, providing information on height, hair color, new job title in the area and an immediate request to remove our ad and accept their cashier/money order check. Then the conversation goes no where. They just continue emailing about how they're going to send the money over and please reserve the room.

Then I posted my sisters old wedding dress for sale and the same thing happens. Lady wants my contact and I give it. She asks it again, says she'll pay more than what I ask for and goes on and on about how she's going to handle the transaction blah blah blah.. I sent 3 email out and gave up after. What's going on? Are these people expecting me to volunteer my bank account number because I'm so excited they're willing to pay immediately and MORE than what I asked for? Are there really people that stupid out there to have given their account information to have kept such scams alive?

Or did I just get suckered into having useless emailings with people.

1 comment:

Ben said...

I think you're hitting up two kinds of scammers (or at least less-than-scrupulous folks).

The rent ad is clearly someone else who wants to rent their place out, and probably is just eliminating competition by asking you to remove your ad.

The second one is REAL! They must really want to pay over what you asked for, because you probably underpriced your product, and they are such pillars of the community that they are happy to do the market correction for you! Such wonderful folks! NOT.

Though I have to say that when I was once approached by some guy clear across the country who wanted to buy it for his daughter in college (blahblahblah), I laid out all my payment conditions and the order in which they must happen if I'm going to accept. He agreed to all of them -- I had to doublecheck what I told him to make sure I wasn't out the money -- I ended up shipping him the PC for some $900 after he PayPal'd me the money. Guess what? It really was a legit buyer, because I got my money first, and then I shipped out the machine a day later.