So, I posted my Planet Ocean for sale on Craigslist. Clearly stated in the title was "BRAND NEW". A few hours after I posted it, I get a text from a guy in Georgia. Red flag #1: "What is the condition of the watch?", he asks. Well, it's brand new, as stated in the title. So, he says he can make the payment via PayPal. I tell him I will only accept PayPal Gift Transfer (because he has no buying history) or bank wire. Red flag #2: He willingly accepted the PayPal Gift Transfer option without asking about my credibility/references. No one in their right mind would shell out $3,700 via a Gift Transfer to someone they did no research on. So, I wait. No payment. Three days later, I get a text saying something like, "THREE DAYS AND NO SHIPMENT? WTF MAN?!?!?!" So, at first, I did panic a bit. I logged into PayPal and saw no recent transactions. So, of course, I look in my spam folder, and behold, I had two unread emails from "PayPal". After about 15 seconds, I knew the emails were blatantly fake. The grammar was terrible, the sentences made no sense, and the genera message was, "John Appleseed sent you $X,XXX. It is okay to send the item – you are 100% safe because of PayPal Seller Protection". Upon further inspection of the email, I find out it was masked under a fake URL – not the actual PayPal URL. The entire email was the enormous red flag #3. I sent him a text back saying, "hey man, this is obviously a scam, and you are a terrible person". The responding text is the best part of the story. He says, "**** you man, I'm calling the police. This is my headache, not yours". So, yeah. That was my recent experience with a Craigslist scammer. Always perform due diligence before doing anything non face-to-face over Craigslist, especially with watches. I thought I'd share this with you guys. It's nothing special, but I thought it might make some of you chuckle. And, most importantly, I wanted to spread awareness of the massive amount of Craigslist scammers out there. Cheers, y'all, Jeff
Well done Survey Man, saved yourself a lot of heartache there. And let this be a lesson to you other kiddies selling/buying watches on the interwebs.
Is it illegal to mail a box of poop to someone if I know they've scammed me? I seriously might do this to the next scammer.
Thanks for sharing. Never hurts to remind people of the huge number of scams being run on a daily basis.
Reminds me of this site http://www.419eater.com/ Lot's of hilarious stories, check out the "trophy room"
I like the picture of the watch idea. You might take it on your wrist with one very important finger pointing straight up. He clearly deserves it. It would make you feel better sending the message. Good job being cautious.
There's an episode of This American Life about this and it's amazing: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/363/enforcers
Sucks to hear about shitty people like this but it's good to post. Oh and how about this? Guess it is legal! http://www.poopsenders.com
Perfectly legal...be sure to add a sticker to the box: Place box in Microwave and heat for :30 prior to opening.
Tempting options but you never know what lunatic is on the receiving end. Have anyone mentioned sending over all the correspondence with an explanation to the police and filing a claim of attempted fraud as an option? Boring but most likely the best way ahead.
Glad to see that common sense prevailed against the scammer. Is amazing and unfortunate that in this day and age there are some out there that will fall for these types of scams.
Alternative is sponsoring the local HA club with a few hundred dollars, but that would normally be step two after the police have declined the case, and I guess only if you actually have been had. Lesson learned (fortunately the good way): Money talk. BS walks.
Would not be too cocky on anything done on Craigslist http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/craigslist-killings/
