I used to do lots of album covers for a music company that worked with folks from all over, and I once got to work with a Nigerian musician. They were very nice and professional, but when I sent them the bill, they responded with a weirdly defensive email about how they would pay me right away and that they were very reliable and that not all Nigerians are scammers. I said I would never assume that (given that I have close personal friends from Nigeria), and asked when to expect payment. They said that since they were forbidden from using Paypal or any other payment type, I should give them full access to my bank account so they could “work with it directly”. Suffice it to say that I never got paid.
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I had someone do this via craigslist for a room rental, truth stranger than fiction, they sent snail mail a certified check that passed / cleared my bank, then they cyber begged for the money back. Problem was they no longer had an account to return the funds to, I donated the cash to my liver…
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This is the woman I want to marry.
Assuming she also has lots of money and is a good cook.
She gets a lot of unsolicited proposals.
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I do too, except they all seem to have subject lines like “Candy needs your Attention” and end up in my spam folder for some reason.
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When selling stuff on CL, I’ve seen the one where they offer you more than what you are asking in order to do the deal outside of Paypal (sending check, whatever) or any other place where you have recourse on a bad transaction.
One time, when I was selling on Ebay, I had someone bid up an item for way more than it was worth. “Sweet!” I thought. He claimed he never received the item–it was a guy in Belgium which at the time had no way to track package delivery. I refunded him the money. Later I found out, because a lack of transparency there, this was a common scam. There’s no recourse against someone who claims they never received anything, and Belgium became a bit of a hotbed of scammers. So much so that when I needed to add Skype credit so I could make phone calls on an overseas trip, my credit card transaction was denied because the Skype payment processor was in Belgium. Like, my credit card company denied all transactions to Belgium. That is nuts.
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A long time ago I had two extra tickets to burning man I needed to sell. Sold them to someone on CL. For the exchange we ended up meeting in a parking lot. They paid me from a greasy paper bag full of lose bills while their friend nervously paced around us scanning the entrances to the parking lot. Felt like I was in a indie film with bad over acting. Not a scam but just odd.
I was talking to someone at work and they sold a game system to someone in the “US”. My co-worker ended up figuring out the person was using a re-shipper that makes it look like the purchaser is in the US when they are actually from some place known for being scammy. In this case the purchaser marked the game system as broken before the shipment had even made it to the re-shipper and was trying to get a refund. My co-worker ended up out maneuvering the scammer but the whole thing turns me off to selling online anymore.
Since it is so rare for me to even need to sell things anymore I have to assume people that run scams as their daily business are going to have an advantage over me. Right now I actually need to sell a Nintendo and Super Nintendo classic and am trying to find a way to sell it locally to avoid all the online scammyness. The entire mess is such a put off.
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