I'm looking to buy a car and I keep seeing nice cars listed ridiculously low and then an hour later, the ad is removed. Anyway, I don't understand what the lister is doing. Are they trying to get information from people or do a bait and switch? I've wondered this for a while, but today I got in touch with someone who is selling a car for what looks like a reasonable deal, but when I went back to look at the ad, it was flagged and removed. I don't know why that would happen. Anybody out there have any idea?
I was looking for a used car for a while, but gave up on Craigslist. Usually the scam lister includes an email, and when you google it, several entries for the same car show up for Craigslists of other cities. Their scam is that they want to ship the car to you and offer some weird "ebay insurance" scheme as a guarantee that the goods will come. Obviously ebay isn't involved in this arrangement and what prospective car buyer would fork over any money without testing the car in the first place?
Most of the time, it's a scam. They will say something like, send me money and I'll ship you the car, etc... Sometimes people get over zealous and flag items they see as too cheap and seems like a scam. What ever you do. See the car, hand over the money, and take the title and the car, or you are hosed.
I recently sold a car on Craigslist. It was kind of a weird experience though. The guy just came and bought the car with cash. He didn't even bother to take the car for a test drive or anything. On top of that he didn't even take the title, since I didn't have it with me at the time. He came back after a few days to pick up the title. I basically posted an ad on CL at 10PM on a Wednesday, the guy contacted me at 11PM on Wednesday and he came and looked at, picked up and paid for the car by 10AM on Thursday. Its legit cash, since I already deposited it in the bank and has already cleared in my balance.
FWIW, I posted the ad for my Lexus IS at current blue book value. My first ad was flagged, so I posted it again and it wasn't flagged. It might have just been other sellers trying to limit the supply of cars available on CL.
I've seen this before. I once contacted one of them before their ad was flagged and shot a few emails back and forth with him. Basically, he was offering a BMW for real cheap, and when I emailed him, he told me he was in Colorado (ad posted in Houston) with his hospitalized son. They need money ASAP so he proposed that we conduct the deal through an escrow service (kind of like paypal). For this escrow service, I'm supposed to make an account and pay him then the escrow service will drive the car to me from the garage it's at. I guess the escrow service is supposed to feel like there's a middle-man protecting you from the scam, but the thing is the escrow service itself is the scam. When I checked the domain information on the website for the escrow service he gave me, it said the domain had been created a few weeks earlier. When I did some research online, I found that this escrow service scam has been going around for a while. Although I suppose not all of those good deals are scams, I'd be wary if it seems too good to be true, especially if you can't meet them face to face.
anytime i look for things/post things on craigslist once the person says anything about a third party, forget it just stop readin the email there i even posted something on facebook marketplace and there are ppl that try to pull scams on there..some dude made a fake profile, messaged me that he had interest with all this crap so just to mess with him i emailed him and was like i dont mess with scams, so he makes another fake profile, with a girls name this time, and sends the same thing word for word..i was like you have to be kidding me this is the message he sent me: Hello I am fully interested in purchasing your item with no delay,but first? i want you not to sell your item to somebody else expect me because am fully willing to purchase it. By answer my question below: [1.] Do you accept a ( Cashier Check / Money Order ) as a mode of payment? [ 2. ] What is the final asking prize you can go at last? [3.] What is the condition of the items? [4] Will you let our shipping company to come to you house for the pick up of the item cos we don't want you to worry yourself about the shipping of the item . [5] You are to send your NAME,ADDRESS,TEL # to mail out the payment today. Also the payment which you are going to receive will include the shipping company fees that will come and pickup the item in your giving location. So hope you can wire the excess fund's on the payment as soon as you receive it via western union to the shipping company. Regards get back to me with ur 1NAME AND ADDRESS, 2.CITY STATE. 3,ZIP CODE AND TELEPHONE NUMBER NOTE;make sure that u get back to me with ur personal email directly to me to my privateyahoo account which is dele_ticos@yahoo.com,bcos i dont normally check my facebook account.that is u should reply me directly with ur personal email address to my personal yahoo email account which is dele_ticos@yahoo.com all mail should be sent directly to my yahoo account which is dele_ticos@yahoo.com,reply me directly with ur personal email address if truly u want to sell ur item to me bcos i dont normally chech my facebook account
That makes sense. I asked the guy that I've been corresponding with why his ad got flagged and he said that he didn't know, but I can tell that it's not one of those 3rd party scams. It makes sense that if there's a good deal out there, somebody would flag it so they can get the deal with less competition.
