Craigslist - this site full of scammers?

Ryno

Ryno

Active member
Staff member
I have never used this site before but recently I put my laptop for sale up on it, in a smaller regional portion of the site and so far every reply has been fishy sounding out of country people replying..

1) Lady from Edmonton who wants to send it to an old college friend in Nigeria.

2) Some guy in Wisconsin who wants to send it to his son as a birthday present, but he is living in west africa with his mother who works at the US embassy there. He also wants to pay with Storm pay and I have no fucking idea what that is.

3) Some dude who keeps refering to me as "mate" and left a 12-digit phone number with a plus sign at the start of it (aka out of country)

4) A guy who wants to send it to his girlfriend who lives and work with the American International School, in Nigeria.

5) Some dude who wants it shipped to some country now because its for his son who is leaving soon to another country that would make shipping hard to do.

6) Some rude chick who wants to me to ship it abroad for 200 bucks ASAP.

All of them have bad grammar and I seem to get these emails in groups of 2 or 3 within a one hour period every couple days.

What the fuck is with this? It's not listed on some international forum...This site just seems like its full of scammers...

 
Well, yeah.

The whole point of craigslist is to buy things in person, to avoid a scam. Don't ever ship to anyone in Nigeria. EVER. EVERRRRRRRRR. They will steal whatever you are selling. Don't even ship to anyone through craigslist.
 
everyone seems to want to send it to nigeria. just have them pick it up from your house or something, as long as you get the money, i guess its cool, right?
 
ok good to know. i wasnt going to send it to any of these people because they never give exact info and it just sounds sketch. But i had never used this site so it was wack to see.
 
i've used it once to get a fishtank, worked out perfectly. i drove like 20 minutes to this guys apartment, gave him some cash, he gave me the tank. actually gave me back like $5, and threw in some extra shit. my mom used it to sell a thule, transaction went smoothly as well. i've never had a problem with it, but all my transactions have been done in person.
 
I get quite a few of those emails from Gideon Smith saying he wants me to donate money to his family in Nigeria......... what is with scammers and Nigeria!?
 
yes. craigslist rule #1 - ONLY do in-person cash-only transactions.

I've never had a bad experience though. The Portland, OR Craigslist is awesome, I've gotten so much stuff for free or cheap there. Sold and given away some stuff too, without any of those shipping to Nigeria emails.
 
only if they mark the payment as goods. if they put it as services they can claim that it was an unauthorized transaction and make their money back. here is an example from another forum im on..

his might be a long read, but it's been bothering me forever.

So

back around July 07 I sold my partshopmax coilovers to this guy on

Zilvia (is fucking retarded) (is fucking retarded). He sent me paypal

$900 under "services" which I thought was a little strange, but he

claimed it had smaller fees (I should have checked). Anyway, I

accepted the payment, waited until it transferred to my bank account,

then shipped out the coilovers. I never got a response from him

telling me he got the coilovers, but the tracking confirmed it was

delivered, and 2 weeks later he posts it for sale on Zilvia (is fucking

retarded) (is fucking retarded).

SO I'm thinking, alright, he's

just a pussy who can't handle stiff coilovers. No biggie. But wow I

was wrong. Next day I get an email from paypal saying my balance is

-$900. Fuck....

I look through my resolution center and

apparently they issued a chargeback for this guy because he claimed the

paypal transaction was "unauthorized". So I close my bank account to

keep them from taking away my hard earned money. I got all my evidence

together including screenshots of all our conversations about the

coilovers, screenshots of my paypal screens, and even screen shots of

him listing the very item I sold him.

Needless to say, paypal ruled in his favor for 2 reasons...

1. Since he sent money through "services" paypal doesn't provide seller protection.

and

2. I shipped it to his secondary address, not his primary, which apparently doesn't have seller protection.

--------

and im pretty sure that transactions outside of ebay with paypal over no protection..
 
pretty much anything that involves africa is a scam. first they got me with aids, now they're tryin to take my money. dammit.

seriously though as people said the point of craigslist is that you sell stuff locally so if someone is sayin that want you to ship stuff they are probably up to no good. unless it's like a really rare item or something that they couldn't find locally I guess, but definitely avoid africa junk
 
Yea, do local pickup only. I've bought a few things off people advertising stuff there. Just go to their house or whatever and pay for the stuff, and leave. It's so easy and a great site to sell things on. Just don't ship anything.
 
A good rule of thumb is... if they don't put a space after their periods or they don't capitalize the first letter of each sentence, they are scammers. 

Let me know if I am wrong, that is just how I always used to quickly sort through scammers.
 
i love craigslist, i use it all the time. And yes, everytime I have used it to buy something or sell something it has been in person, like how it is intended to be.....thats why u search locally.
 
Craigslist is great, but PERSON TO PERSON DEALS ONLY. There are so many ways to be scammed via paypal that I dont even consider it usually.
 
Ya I almost got suckered into one of those scams when I was selling my guitar. Then I put on my big screen TV and some person wanted me to ship it to like Africa.
 
craigslist is legit if you follow one simple rule...LOCAL / IN PERSON ONLY.

i sold some v-drums on craigslist just fine with no hassle about a year ago, because the guy who bought them was local and i met him in person. he picked up the drums from my house and paid me right there.

i DID receive some pretty sketchy e-mails while i had the listing up tho (horrible grammar and spelling, out of state, etc), but i just ignored them.
 
just to warn- the whole nigeria thing works like this-

1.they pay you through paypal with a stolen card.

2. the money appears to be in your paypal account.

3. you ship the stuff to them in nigeria.

4. the person whos card they stole cancels the card.

5. the credit card issuer (visa etc) cancels and removes the scammers transactions.

6. you now have no money, and the goods are on their way to nigeria, never to be seen again.
 
yeah its not a good idea to use craiglist without personal pickup. paypal wont cover you if you're scammed. and ive had a few instances where i emailed a few people with weird ass names and they said that i would need to send the money to them in italy or croatia because they were "on vacation". pshhhhh
 
yeah local pickup only. I sold camera equipment on there. the guy sent me an email. then we talked on the phone. he sent me money via paypal when I got to his office. I checked on my phone that I had received the money. gave him the camera stuff. he tried it out. he was very happy with it. we talked a bit and we parted ways.

he had time to try the stuff out to make sure I wasnt giving him broken stuff. I got the money neither of us could have gotten screwd with the way we went about this.
 
My dad works on ebay and probably gets around 20 of those nigeria emails a day. just a bunch of scammers
 
ive helped my dad sell some stuff on craigslist before but only locally. when you do it in person its totally legit but i dont think i would do it any other way. sending it off somewhere seems kind of sketchy and craigslist isnt really meant for that, its more of a local thing.
 
i bet there are a ton of people in nigeria who are getting shafted by the fact that no americans will do business with them anymore.
 
who did business with nigerians to begin with?

the only business I've done with nigerians is in prague and they take you to the strip clubs (which are actually brothels) and the clubs kick em back some money. those guys were legit though.

Craigslist is hot shit for furniture and whatnot
 
i bought a pair of 06 dj2's from some guy in oakland, ca when i live in ny. everything went well for me.

but on pinkbike there used to be shit like what to look out for if you were in the buy/sell section.

shit like they'll send you ___ money, and then send the money left over to a friend in some foreign country, and all that shit is scams.
 
Agreed. If you're still being hoodwinked by some bullshit scam based in Nigeria, you deserve to lose whatever you send over there.
 
my friends shit is the same way hes had two or three people send him 3-5000 dollar checks when the price is only 400. and a bunch of people askin for lots of random personal info
 
I've used craigslist for about 23 purchases.. including a car, skis, and paintball gun. Purchases that were easily over 500 each.

Just know how to haggle, know how to buy, and dont be fucking naiive and you should be fine.
 
haha i live in bend and ive had so much better experience getting stuff through portlands craigslist then having my relatives pick it up. the people in portland are so nice compared to where i live
 
Hello seller,

i saw your advert on this site, i will like to known,

if the item is still available for sell? and i will like to know more

about it,current pics and like the asking price i will like you to know

that my mode of payment it is via certified cashier check / money

order...get back to me if you really want to sell the item..

Thank's Regard's.

thanks.

I only accept cash. Or if you are insistent on cashier check/money

order I will hold the xbox/ps2 until it clears with the bank. The

pictures were taken 2 or 3 days ago. $250 or best offer.

Thanks,

James

thanks with the reply.ok with that ,the check will clesr before my

private shipper come for the pick_up of the item..ok..await to hear

from you soonest.

Dear Randal, I have caught a deadly strand of AIDS from a hooker. Bad

for me, good for you. I've decided to straight up give away all my

stuff for the price of 1 doller per item, all the profits will go to

the endangerered western witches of new guinie fund, aka EWWNG. Respond

asap as soon as possible if you are interested in my xbox and ps2 +

games. Will you need any additional infomation from me?

the scammer is in italics, hopefully the paragrapsh work
 
i never deal with outsiders when im buying from kijiji or craigslist. i only do locals or near my city, and i want to pick it up and meet.
 
people hear nigeria and go " oh man that place is poor as shit" so then it seems legit to send money there when really it's going to some fat guy in his parents basement scamming the shit out of people so he can pay for his x-box live without getting a real job
 
Depends on the region man. The NYC area is legit as hell about Craigslist. I bought a couple of things off it, and even got a job.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top