You’ve probably heard of Craigslist. Basically, it’s an online classified ad site where you can sell or buy items, find jobs, dates or local events.
It’s an interesting site, for a variety of reasons:
- The design of the site is super-minimalist. It’s changed very little since 1996, so it’s an example of pure function over flash (and Flash, for that matter).
- The company genuinely seems more interested in creating value than raking in supermassive profits, which it could do if it would just fill the site up with paid advertising and skeevy JavaScript (their profits are pretty massive anyway, though).
- It’s only source of revenue is paid job listings in certain cities
There are more, but “Why Craigslist Is Neat” is not the title of today’s post.
When you’re selling something on Craigslist, it’s very likely you’re going to get some messages from people attempting to scam you. So how do you avoid them?
First and foremost, deal only with local people you can meet in person, and accept only cash as payment. With this one step, you will reduce your chances of running into a scam to nearly nothing.
When you do meet your buyer in person, only do so in a public place (never at your home), make sure you tell your friends or family where you are going, bring a cell phone, consider bringing a friend, and listen to any nagging doubts you might have when you’re meeting the buyer. These tips are directly from Craigslist’s page on the topic of personal safety.
Never give any personal information to anyone during the course of a Craigslist transaction. You’re buying or selling an object with cash. Nobody needs anybody’s account numbers (or full name, in my opinion).
Generally, nobody from Craigslist is going to contact you about your listing, as the company is not involved in the transaction at all. There are no “guarantees,” and anyone who talks of these things is up to no good.
You might get people who agree to buy an item, then send you a cashier’s check for ten times the amount, with instructions to cash it and wire the excess back to them.
Sound familiar? It should—it’s a variation on the old secret shopper scam, this time in the form of an overpayment scam.
However, if you’re following the number one rule (cash only, local in-person sales only), you eliminate the possibility of this scam entirely.
Craigslist has a page dedicated to avoiding scams, which contains some examples of different scams, as well as the following:
Most scams involve one or more of the following:
- inquiry from someone far away, often in another country
- Western Union, Money Gram, cashier’s check, money order, shipping, escrow service, or a “guarantee”
- inability or refusal to meet face-to-face before consummating transaction
Finally, make sure you’re actually on Craigslist. The real web address is www.craigslist.org. Watch out for easy misspellings like “craiglist” or different domains (.com or .net).
It’s a great site if you use it wisely (and an interesting business model), but be aware of the dangers and stick to in-person sales using cash.