Geez, Craigslist responses are two thirds scamers.

[Cadwelder]

Re: Geez, Craigslist responses are two thirds scamers.

CL is basically an electronic garage sale- you get that same types. You have a nice item that may be worth $50, but wanna get rid of it fast so you ask $5. Then the garage sale low ballers show up and offer you a quarter or something. My sister gave away for free a pretty nice older redwood picnic table, with the two long benches. The short benches for the ends of the table were long gone.
Guy rolls up and asks the price- sister tells him it's free for the hauling. He then spends the next half hour beating her up for the missing end benches. They are long gone, she says. Guy can't get over that and leaves. Idiots.

Now that one takes the cake....argues over FREE. Geeeeez

 

[eavega]

Re: Geez, Craigslist responses are two thirds scamers.

I have bought and sold thousands of dollars worth of items on craigslist. I've also managed to keep my rental property in NC rented for the last 5 years with only one deadbeat tenant by advertising exclusively through CL. Sure, I invariably get the scanner e-mails. I've gotten pretty good at filtering them out. I keep an e-mail account exclusively for CL transactions, and my anti-scanner technique is to only respond to folks who e-mail me a response which includes a local telephone number. Doesn't do a thing for low-ballers, but I don't mind those.

Rgds

 

[lakelover]

Re: Geez, Craigslist responses are two thirds scamers.

I also hate the people that respond and want me to call them. I've started adding a line in my ad saying that I deal with CL exclusively via email and please do not ask me to call you. It has worked well.

That's pretty much what I do. As a seller, I pretty much feel things out with email exchanges and when I'm confident they're genuine, I'll give them a call. I'm very careful about who I give directions to my house to, and sometimes meet off-site. As far as the scam emails go, I just delete them as par for the course. Some of them have actually proved quite entertaining.

 

[mscher]

Re: Geez, Craigslist responses are two thirds scamers.

My issue with CL is that since eBay bought a big chunk of the stock "improvement" of CL has come to a complete stand still while the rest of the world has moved ahead. They could filter a huge percentage of the spammers out fairly easily, organize things much better (instead of everything simply going under the heading BOAT) and do a lot more to protect both buyers and sellers. But that might even the playing field too much with eBay...

IMO, eBay would have shut down CL, the minute they purchased it - if they thought they could get away with it.

They know someone would have opened a "Fredslist", the next week and everybody would start using that, for free.

CL is ebay's worst nightmare.

 

[jtmarten]

Re: Geez, Craigslist responses are two thirds scamers.

Naw, that's not true. Advertizing alone (if they implemented it) would cover the costs, just ask Google. As an example imagine an iBoat ad running on the side of the monitor when people look at boats. They could even use "smart ad" technology. Say you are looking at fishing boats, great time and place to adveritze fishing gear.

I'd much rather have the current free version than one with all those stupid ads. Heck, I rarely watch live TV anymore, just about everything I watch is on the DVR so I can skip the @!&$ commercials. I'll even usually wait until about an hour after the Bears/Cubs games start before I start watching, I usually catch up to the live feed by the end of the game.

 

[badkins50]

Re: Geez, Craigslist responses are two thirds scamers.

I love the ones that reply "just give me your paypal and home address information and I'll transfer the money and will schedule a shipping company to pick up later" even though they have not even seen the item. AMAZING what people will try to get away with.

 

[LadyFish]

Re: Geez, Craigslist responses are two thirds scamers.

I google their email address before I do anything, you'd be surprised what you learn. Also, I never give them my phone number. I ask if them there is a number I can reach them at.

 

[mscher]

Re: Geez, Craigslist responses are two thirds scamers.

I love the ones that reply "just give me your paypal and home address information and I'll transfer the money and will schedule a shipping company to pick up later" even though they have not even seen the item. AMAZING what people will try to get away with.

The scammers would not go to this trouble, if the ruse did not work, at least some of the time.

Still plenty of greedy and gullible people out there.

Ole, PT was right. There still is a sucker born every minute.

 

[mike64]

Re: Geez, Craigslist responses are two thirds scamers.

My wife sells a lot of stuff on CL so she gets these kind of scams pretty often. She asks me if they are scams to make sure, and I can spot a scam from a mile away, but I'm not always sure what they're going after.

She just uses the blind CL email to be safe, and she used to get emails that would just say something like "what is the", like they hit send by mistake. They were obviously trying to get her to reply asking what they wanted so they could harvest her email for spam lists, I assume.

But lately she's getting emails saying in very broken english, stuff like "i so very inrested, please me call", with phone numbers that have varied area codes I don't recognize (suburbs of Nigeria?). I'm just wondering, what's their scam-- harvesting cell numbers for telemarketer lists? Or is it more likely that scam where they say they'll send a (fake) cashier's check for like $1000 over the amount (for some crazy reason, they have to do it this way) and they ask to send a check for the difference back?

 

[jay_merrill]

Re: Geez, Craigslist responses are two thirds scamers.

The trick to CL, is not to post your email or your phone number. Do a blind response link and insist on a phone number from a potential buyer. If they are serious, they'll provide it.

Anyone who won't or asks some dopey question, is fishing for email addresses. The usual ones are, "does it run," "is it still available," etc. What they are trying to do, is to get you to respond, because when you do, your email address is revealed.