I just listed our camper of CL.

It is VERY clean for a 12 year old camper. Great condition. Put up 4 or 5 really clear pictures.

30 minutes later, I get a text.

Here it is: "Hello am interested in this posting,what is the condition? Is it exactly like it is in the pics? get back to me asap, Cody.."

I responded:

"No. Truth be known, I photoshopped the pictures to remove the bloodstain left from where the previous owner was murdered."

I've used CL a lot. Invariably, after I place an ad, within a couple hours I'll get a scam email. Never fails. You soon get to where you can spot them in a second.

No It's a brand new one. I took a pic of a 12 year old camper cause I stupid.

Recently posted a Swaro spotting scope for sale here at the fire, a few other sites and CL as well. My price is spelled out precisely, and yet I get a text asking if I'd take $1000 despite my price being listed. I sometimes wonder if folks troll CL or if people are truly that stupid..

It's tough dealing with these nuckleheads. I always get the offers for about 50 to 60% of asking price with the very tempting caveat, "I've got cash in hand". I always want to tell them, "You've got two hands, fill'em up and get back to me". It's such an odd statement that apparently is too tempting for some to overcome. When I post something for sale, and we reach a deal, it's generally expected that all buyers, when we finalize the deal, must have "cash in hand". I don't care if they have it in hand or not as long as, when the time comes to meet, they then have the agreed amount, "in hand".

Really?!?! You've got cash in hand. Wow! Well, that certainly makes your otherwise unacceptable offer more appealing.

I have listed quite a few things on CL and nothing until this last posting
I had a 1972 Miller 600D welding machine as well as other things this go around.
I wanted $2500 for it.
I listed it for $3000 this was on Friday 5/19/17
Got two hits on Saturday

The serious one came by and asked what my best price for it was I asked him what he would give me for it. He said $2500 I was going to say $2750 when he told me Cash today and I will help you pull it out of the hole it was in.

I told him it was going to take me several hours to pull it out and he said OK i will help you.

2 1/2 hours latter it was loaded on his truck heeded for China.
Cash in my had and he did about 1/3rd of the work getting it loaded

Two more hits last night on other stuff.

CL can be a pain some times but it delivered this time around.

I know it sounds crazy, but some folks will post photos of stuff from when they first got it 4-5 years before. Others will show pics from "before the hail storm"..... Not defending the guy, but I always hate to waste my time driving to look at stuff based on "old pictures", or finding out that some idiot is trying to sell a car/truck/tractor for thousands of $$$'s, and couldn't be bothered with spending $75 on a battery to start the damn thing...

I'm shopping for a camper. I saw an ad on Craigslist with a single picture. The ad read "Everything works"

That, and the price.





P

And if he sprung for the cash what would it have mattered.......

Read the guy's response. It is broken english at best.

Definitely a scammer.

Which is why, when he asked if it looks like the pictures, I lied and said no, I photoshopped the photos to remove the bloodstain.

After I told him there was a big bloodstain that I photoshopped out of the pictures I posted on CL, I get the following:

Great, nice to read from you,Well i saw the pics just wanna be sure, i'm ok with the price and present condition,i mean no insult kindly reply me with the pickup location and zipcode so i can confirm from transport company how much it cost for the moving and delivery, Regards"

Typed exactly how he/she texted to me.

My response:

"No Problem

The location is.....

Just to be clear, you're ok with the bloodstain and the previous owner having been murdered in this camper?"

So, did you get his Nigerian money order, yet????😜

I think his response was sincere. He's likely used to people selling pure trash on Craigslist which prompted his question. Lots of good buyers on Craigslist who aren't the brightest bulb in the box as well.

Then the latest response is:

"I forwarded your zipcode and location to my transport company and am okay with the transport charges also, they charged me $750,i think we can have a very good business now,My name is Cody Cooks Hope you have a paypal account for the payment thanks"

Did you not catch the broken english? The fractured sentences? The canned questions?

I assume most of the initial text messages are computer generated. Follow ups might then be written by someone.

Did you not catch the fact that he doesn't care that I PHOTOSHOPPED the ad pictures? That I photoshopped out a bloodstain?

This is a typical scammer.

I am just having fun playing him along.

Tell him your name is Roger Mfume, and you'd like him to wire you the money to your Nigerian bank account. Oh, and the trailer is available for pickup at a campsite just over the Canadian border...

The usual first red flag is when the first inquiry includes the following: "Is your item still available?".

CL is the worst. i sold my car on there a few years ago with the obligatory "i don't need help selling this car, please do not contact me for help selling this car". i got multiple calls/emails for fuggers wanting to help me sell the car.

There is a reason I have some folks blocked on this site.....

The last scammer I dealt with on CL stopped texting me after I asked for his SS# and mother's maiden name.

You never know who is on the other end of the email, for good or bad.

I replied about a motorcycle lift for a cheap price a year or two back. I was put off initially by the texts I got about it, but tried to be patient and follow through on my end. It turned out a guy had died and his young oriental widow (who worked crazy hours) was selling off his stuff. It was only 2 blocks away from my house! Everything was 100% legit and I got a deal that time.

You never know though....

[quote=gwrench]...am interested in this posting.../quote]

This would have sent the reply directly to the trash bin.

Have never used CL. However, like some of the ingenious replies... Tag for future reference...

"Cash only upon pickup" shuts them down every time.

I love to delete the stupid fug's that have 15, 5$ articles and list them all separate taking up the whole page stupid bastads get the hint after about the third time!!!!!!!!

I do not sell things, I give them away or throw them away.... except for a car we got for the kids to commute to school. I sold it on Craig's list.

An extended family of blacks showed up with multiple cars in my dark driveway and moved as fast as cats.

I felt like a blind old man in slow motion watching money being counted on top of my garbage can.

The buyer was a guard for the University of Washington basketball team.

Luckily Craigslist ain't an option around here.

I tried to sell a truck on CL a couple years ago. I won't try selling a vehicle on there again.

That experience ranged from hilarious to terrifying.

If you got some time to kill....
Don't even reply

yes it is in Tennessee, bought several pieces of farm equipment on CL there.

Sure, but the nearest city listed is 90 minutes away, with a handful of posts from a town 20 miles away.

and 2 hours away from the cities is where I have bought stuff, normal people not the ones from crack whore hollow

Compelling

CL is not what it use to be.

Ten years ago it was a decent place to do business....both buying and selling. Any more it's just for entertainment....and even that isn't what it use to be.
"Rants and Raves" use to be funny....

The "Buyer" wanted my paypal account. Asked me to make a new account if need be.

And has since dropped off the scene. I was going to see about making a paypal account just to see how these guys make dummy transactions work and what this guy's angle was going to be.

He hadn't shown that card yet. I don't know if he was going to pay me the shipping charge and ask me to forward a check or money order to the "shipping company". Or if he was going to overpay me and ask me to wire the overage to an account somewhere.

I tried texting him to see if he still wanted it. Told him a lady just left that wanted to buy it. Was he still interested. No response so far.

i put a camper and an antique stove on CL at the same time.
got a reply on both that was exactly the same wording " hi is this posting still available? if is i will purchase. i will give you 70 $ over your asking, what was the price.
my transport people will bring you money and you can pay them with the extra i send with check. what bank used? i will send check from that bank."
gave me a head ache reading it. i emailed back asking for a phone number and stating CASH only! never heard from them again.
the whole inquiry smelled from the git go.

Guess I must have experienced the exception to the rule. I'd never used CL until a few years ago when we first moved down here. We bought a house here, kept our home up north and left the furnishings in it. We furnished the house down here from Craig's List. We got a lot of really nice furniture for real bargain prices, had no problems with anyone. When we bought another house down here and sold the one up north we had too much stuff, had to get rid of some, back to CL. Quick, easy, no problems.

Learn to accept and respect people for who they are.

Why?

I used to buy and sell on CL but tend to avoid it now. We were looking for a used mower recently and very few were listed on CL. Facebook, on the other hand, had dozens in our area.

Tried to buy a Camaro for my son's first car and the owner wanted me to give him a check so he could take it to his bank to pay it off and get the title. I told him that I would accompany him to the bank and would pay them myself. He then stopped answering my calls. A while later, I seen it posted again but from a different seller. Turns out the original seller had a mechanic's lien against the title that the second owner had to pay off to get it registered... after adding a Magnaflow exhaust and some paint work. We ended up buying it from the second owner.

Craigslist is awesome, unless you're a moron. Then I guess it can be a bit tricky. That and the fact it has driven prices up on many things simply by creating a marketplace.

The real hoot is some of the local "buy sell trade" Facebook pages.

Craigslist searches can be enhanced if you use a sight called Search Tempest.
When you know exactly what you want, a drive of a few miles can be worth it.,

Why do I sometimes think we're brothers from different mothers? I'm also sure we also think the other is an idiot from time to time too.

But yeah, if you know how to place an ad on CL (cough, like the fire, cough) it sells quick. I sold my Camry on CL for well over a grand above book. It was 12 years old with 201k on the odometer and some cosmetic damage. Held out for the right buyer, two weeks later he offers me asking price AFTER I told him if he didn't like my price to make an offer and the worst thing I could do is refuse. He test drove it and thought on it a week while letting me know he was still interested, then told me he'd take it for asking price if I could hold it a couple days. Then met me at my bank, we walked over to the WA licensing office around the corner after I deposited the cash, done deal. You gotta know how to place a good ad, and GSD (that's Get [bleep] Done) AKA "The Art of the Deal." Coulda dropped the car at any time for over a grand less. Patience, and the ability to ignore idiots. The latter being a character trait I do not exhibit on the fire.

For an extra 15-20 minutes of my time and a week's patience I netted an additional $1,200.

Hilarious! I stayed up way past my bed time LMAO reading this.

X2

Really funny

Lot of wife swappers on Craigslist!!

I've bought and sold on CL many times with no very good success. Every time I place an ad, I get the requisite scam email offering up to double my price to hold the 'item' until their friend or whatever can get there to pick it up. After a while you can pretty well spot the scams right away although a few are bit more sophisticated and take a couple emails to catch.

I have been trolled a few times on armslist, won't use them again. no interest in craigslist either

I got kicked off Craigslist for scaring a predator. The man set a "free stuff at curb ad" and set dogs on anyone who came to claim it. Thought it was fun to watch folks run for thier lives. Several folks got bit, including a father/son team, who posted a warning about the azzhole.
I posted I might be by for the free stuff, I'm armed, and will remove the threat if attacked. "Keep the dogs in the house, if I show up". (It was nothing I even wanted, but I thought it might keep the dogs off the next victims. )
My account was dead in less than 10 minutes, he pulled his bait ad, and nobody else got hurt. It had been several years since then, and in all that time, I have never been able to talk directly with anyone actual with Craigslist. And the "forum" for Craigslist issues was a complete waste of time.

That's an understatement.

You could put a $30,000 Lund Pro V on there with price as firm. No trades. Some dipshit will come along and ask something like "will you take an '87 Econo Van in trade?" Or some other dipshit will say something like "I know a guy selling the same boat for half that! How much will you come down?"

Irritating bastards lol

Not exactly like the pictures... It's bigger and 3 dimensional.

Want another? Google if you can "Nigerian scam buster". That gent could talk the legs off of a table.

Holy shït.

This guy?
http://www.ebolamonkeyman.com/Ablert_Fred1.html

LMAO

I have to disagree. This seems like a perfectly reasonable question. A friend told me just yesterday of looking at apartments listed on Craigslist. All of the listings looked clean and new in the ads, none were in real life. One had hardwood floors in the ad, and old carpet in real life. The prospective buyer wondered if the camper being shown was the one for sale, or if you took pictures of a nice one, while hoping a buyer would drive an hour to look at a crappy one. It's a legitimate concern, unfortunately.

Were it worded in more correct fluid english, perhaps.

But as others have mentioned, it was an obvious scammer for anyone who has done any selling on CL.

Did you read the rest of the thread?

I buy and sell alot on Craigslist. I haven't been ripped off or robbed and to be honest I'm pretty liberal about giving out my information.

That said, whenever you sell anything on craigslist, you're guaranteed of two things - you're going to get lowballed by someone because sending a semi-anonymous text or email it just too easy to try - even if you say firm on price and two - someone is going to hit you up with the I'll pay you more because of the hassle of taking a check from me scam (or some variation of it)

I'm also at the point where I don't even bother trying to follow up on the too good to be true ads on craiglist.

If its a really good price on something, I look for a phone number and an address where the area code matches the address. If its email only or a phone with an area code in another state I don't bother responding.

speaking of firm price, had a quad for sale last week - price was firm, guy says its just what he wants, drives over an hour to get there, says he'll take and starts loading it up, hands me cash $50 short of asking price.

I tell him he's $50 short and acts all shocked that I'm calling him on it, so he digs around in the cab of his truck and comes up with $40 more and says its all he has. I'm not gonna piss and moan over $10 but I think its pretty nervy to tell me you'll take it and start loading it up thinking you can hit me up for less than the asking price.

Have another quad for sale right now and am also selling it on Facebook's marketplace thing. It has a "make offer" button which entices people to make ridiculously low offers in the hopes that your so desperate for cash you'll take it. Had a guy ask me my bottom dollar and then responded with "I'll give you half of that". I told him I'd sell him half a quad.

Had an idiot want to trade me a tiger for something I had for sale a couple of years ago.

And then another guy wanted me to take his cat as part of the deal. I told him if he was throwing a cat into the deal the price goes up another $100.

there is no shortage of strange people out on craigslist.

Another thing that keeps happening to me on Craigslist is on the barter page

3 weeks ago I had another quad for sale (different than the ones above) and put it out on the barter page saying I would trade this quad for some mechanic work. No cash trade - come out, complete the mechanic work I wanted (installing a wiring harness and chasing some eletrical gremlins out from an older Honda) and I'd give you the quad.

Gets flagged

Another time I ran an ad asking for flat rate pricing to put in brakes and a new top end on a Polaris I had. I get this angry email from a polaris mechanic telling me I'm a cheap MF'er for not paying the hourly shop rate and after I tell him to go to hell, my ad gets flagged.

Finally, I had an ad offering to provide weekend help around a farm in exchange for the right to ride quads with my family on the land, noting that I would be respectful and not hurt the land. If someone wanted some help occassionaly I'd like to establish a relationship with a local farrmer that is mutually beneficial.

I get not 1 but 2 emails from people essentially saying I was an [bleep] and how farmers work too hard to have their land abused or some craziness.

Then that post gets flagged.

Any experience I've had with posting on Craiglist - everything gets flagged if its not a simple cash transaction for an item.

its strange.

And again, you may be strange to them.
If you are going to sell on craigslist, or for that matter in a retail store, you are going to run into people who are different from you.
At the very same time, we are all alike in the sense that we want to get as much as we can for what we sell, and we want to pay as little as necessary for what we buy.
I too sell a lot of things on Craigslist. I have not met one person who was an "idiot" or a "dipshit" or whatever else people call other people. I have met a lot of people who want to pay less, which is normal. I think its great fun to see how people buy things, and notice that some of the things they do are much the same as what I would do.
The bottom line is that Craigslist is FREE. That is why you are using it. Enjoy the people you meet there.

I've met idiots on there

I'm good with them thinking I'm an idiot too.