Craigslist

[LTown Cat]

So I'm trying to sell my motorcycle and a co-worker told me to list it on Craigslist, which I did. After a couple of emails back and forth with a prospective buyer I received this:

"Good to hear back from you,can you assure me that it's in good condition and that i will not be disappointed with it.I'm ready to pay your asking price and to be honest I am always busy at work and do not have much time around me to make or answer calls. Moreover,I would have loved to call but our satellite server has been down in recent days which restricts our calls.I will be paying you through PayPal as it is the only Medium at which i can send Payment at the Moment.
I would appreciate if you email me with more pictures (if available) too since i won't be be able to see this in person. And if you don't have a PayPal account, It's pretty easy to set up a PayPal account at http://www.paypal.com/it's" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; just a few minutes away from signing up. it's safe and secure for both Parties and i have been using PayPal to buy and sell for years now without problems. Please get back to me with your PayPal email so i can proceed with the payment and contact the Pick up Agent who will come for the Pick up of the item.
I will need these following details so i can proceed with the payment right away

*Your PayPal e-Mail Address
*Home Address

As soon as you get back to me with your PayPal email, I'll proceed with full Payment. I look forward to reading from you soon.
Regards"


Sounds awful fishy to me. Anyone have an suggestions on how to proceed?

[allcat]

Go to paypal, don't use a link. Paypal works fine. I send JDoub money for the cups he was ordering, worked great. All the guy at the other end needs is your email address. To be safe with somone I don't know, make up a new email address, then go to paypal.

[AlphaGriz1]

Its a scam, my dad called me last week with roughly the same sales pitch. If somebody want to buy your stuff they can show up and buy it.

Paypal is safe but I dont waste my time with people that cannot get in contact with me with all the technology in todays world. Proceed with caution.

[rtb]

Yes it's definitely a scam. As Alpha said, PayPal is totally safe. Selling something to someone who "doesn't have time, the ability, etc." to look at your item is a scam. They are doing a few things.

-Fishing for email and PayPal address to try and take over PayPal accounts.
-Planning to "accidentally" send you more "money" than you are asking via a fake account or using a fake cashiers check/wire, then ask you to send most of the "accidental" overage back to them, but keep some for your trouble. Then you are basically out a whole bunch of money that didn't exist ever or they are laundering money.
-Simply fishing for email addresses and any personal information they can get to create fake accounts for you later.

Craigslist is a GREAT way to sell stuff, but I would say for every item you list you should expect 60-75% of the responses to not be legitimate. I usually reply using the anonymous option with craigslist and offer to have them come look at the item you are selling. Most of the time you won't get a response back after that reply. Be very leery of anyone responding to you.

[LTown Cat]

Thanks. I did give them my paypal email ID--maybe that was a mistake but I called paypal customer service and the lady said that part was safe. I didn't give them my home address. I told the person that after the money was in my checking account we could arrange pick-up. Haven't heard back since...

Wish I would've asked on here before I replied.

[AlphaGriz1]

Good luck!

[gocats]

I bought my Harley on eBay, using PayPal. Had no problems. But even closing my account years ago, I still get tons of emails saying my account was hacked and I need to verify my password and information.

Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2

[AlphaGriz1]

What kind of Harley?

[gocats]

82 Electra Glide. I loved it. 1" 1/4" drag pipes. Loud as hell. 18" ape hangers. Sold it after all my heart problems. Too many palpitations. Didn't want to skip a
beat or 3 at 80 mph. Thinking of a trike now.
Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2

[AlphaGriz1]

The first 2 are of my bike the last one is my moms trike, just sold it 3 months ago. I am not a trike guy I hate riding them but that just me, to each his own.

[gtapp]

It is a SCAM! It worked on me. I was selling some speakers and I got a similar story. They had official looking PayPal letter head and it looked real. They asked that I pay the shipping in advance and then Pay Pal would release the funds for the speakers. I lost $1300.

[KittieKop]

LTown - if you haven't, get in your PayPal account and get a super secure password set. Like 10+ digits, upper/lower case, special characters, numbers - the whole works. Like rtb said, most likely an attempt to hack your account. I'd lock it down as hard as you can. If you have any other on-line accounts with the same email address/user name, I'd do the same - like an eBay, banking or other account. Anything I'd be worried about money or my ID I'd be watching closely.

And probably goes without saying, don't fall for money order transactions, overpayment, payments to overseas accounts, etc. Definitely if it sounds too good to be true, probably is.

My parents listed a piece of crap truck on Craigslist for sale - like the engine was blown and looked like a pile of crap. Got an immediate bite which involved the old "I'm across the country, can't pick it up, will send you a check, someone will pick the truck up....." No one's coming across the country for a crappy, $1,000 used car, unless there's something pretty special about it. Your sales pitch sounds almost OK until they got to the pick up agent part. I wouldn't touch it with a 100 foot pole.

[AlphaGriz1]

Hey gtapp I have all this money that I can't get into the country........if you send me your bank account number I will let you keep half. Plus I will buy you a beer at the Griz/cat game.

Deal?

[91catAlum]

Hey gtapp I have all this money that I can't get into the country........if you send me your bank account number I will let you keep half. Plus I will buy you a beer at the Griz/cat game.

Deal?

This is a scam - there is no such thing as a "griz/cat" game.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk 2

[AlphaGriz1]

Damn auto correct

[Cledus]

One pretty reliable indicator (I think) is poor grammar, bad spelling, and long, run-on sentences. That communication seemed to stand out to me. I'm not saying every single misspelling means you're being scammed, but it seems to me to be easy to tell when you have a native English speaker who innocently misspells a few words versus an Eastern European or Nigerian person who's trying to sound legit.

[KittieKop]

One pretty reliable indicator (I think) is poor grammar, bad spelling, and long, run-on sentences. That communication seemed to stand out to me. I'm not saying every single misspelling means you're being scammed, but it seems to me to be easy to tell when you have a native English speaker who innocently misspells a few words versus an Eastern European or Nigerian person who's trying to sound legit.

Sounds like most of the Sunday morning football posts on the SMU game!

[AlphaGriz1]

Is Craig a real person like Angie?

[allcat]

Is Craig a real person like Angie?

yes, are you on the I'm bored so why not post on The Nation tour?

[AlphaGriz1]

No

"Somebody" had a talk with me about that.....................Im not naming names but he is a pretty big deal...........AND he wields his power straight and true.