Yesterday my brother asked me to help him find a laptop. I turned to Craigslist and found a “too good to be true” bargain. It was a Macbook Pro that retails new for about $1,300 listed for $400.
I sent an email and received back a message saying the owner was a guy in Charlotte. My first thought was, then why are you running an ad in the Raleigh Craigslist?
The more we emailed back and forth, the more worried I got, but I was holding out hope that maybe just maybe it was just a fluke and I really would get an awesome deal. The emails were written with lots of text message types of contractions and typos, but I overlooked them.
He finally told me that he had a small business and could Fedex the laptop to me on Monday morning.
Finally I sent him a credit card number. I decided to use a credit card we hardly ever use, one that has a very low credit limit. I then went to the website of the card and turn on some additional alerts. I then took the extra step of sending them an email asking them to keep an eye on the account because I felt it may be in jeopardy.
About 8 hours later (12:45am) the phone rings. We ignore it because we’re sleeping. It rings again. Now we answer it. It’s Expedia. They ask if we authorized a purchase of $510 for a hotel in Oxford. Uh, no.
I stumble downstairs and get the credit card out of my wallet. Time to call and report it stolen. I dial the 800 number for Household Bank and get a customer service person. The person is difficult to understand, she sounds like she’s trying to imitate a robot. I tell her about the fraudulent charge. She tells me that since it’s only in a pending state, there’s nothing she can do. Then she launches into the script of asking me if I would like to get some type of overdraft protection for $29. Really, that’s the next step when someone calls you at 1am reporting a fraudulent charge?
I eventually stop her long enough to tell her I’m not interested in that, I would like to cancel the card. Which she says she does. I can now go back to bed.
As you can imagine, it was hard falling back to sleep, but eventually I did. I’m glad I’m jaded enough to take proper precautions when gambling on a Craigslist crapshoot.
It makes me think that Seth Godin is right when he advocates for Craigslist to have a $1 fee to post:
Well, the number of bogus listings and repetitive listings would plummet, making the site far easier to use.
The number of scam artists using the site would go down, because it’s more difficult to be anonymous when money changes hands.
I’ve now been scammed on eBay and Criaglist, not unusual, but they have both taught me valuable lessons.
Have you been scammed online? How did it work out?
Update: The next morning…
Around dinner time last night my wife said, “maybe we could go to IKEA in Charlotte and you can get your laptop in person.” So I send a message asking if he could meet me on Sunday. I received an email this morning at 9:48am from the scammer:
husband said he can come to ikea around 5pm
I was surprised to see that, so immediately wrote back and said, sure I’ll meet you. Asked what kind of car he’ll be in and his cell phone number. Let’s see if I can now reverse scam the scammer.
Karl Sakas says
Thanks for sharing what happened, Phil. I haven’t been scammed online (yet) — the one time my card was stolen was in Italy, and the number was stolen in person (probably from a particular restaurant in Naples).
I ran into a weird situation when I bought my car on Craigslist in New Jersey. The couple selling it said they were selling the Accord on behalf of their 30-something son, who was traveling on business and didn’t have time to do it himself. That seemed to make sense, but the weird thing was they had me make the cashier’s check out to her, rather than the son. Same last name, but still a little strange. Everything turned out fine. In retrospect, I could have been scamming them — they let me take to it to my mechanic to get it inspected after I gave them nothing more than a $500 check as a deposit.
Hindsight’s 20/20 and all that… beyond a potential scam, I’d want to see the merchandise in person to confirm it worked. The “sight unseen” would bother me. I’m sure this guy convinced more than one person to turn over their info. Security expert Gavin de Becker’s book The Gift of Fear talks about how we tend to minimize our nagging concerns, which leads to avoidable problems (primarily in violent situations, but also in general).
Jeremy says
I’ve been scammed on eBay – it was so long ago, I can’t remember what it was I purchased or what amount it was, but ever since that incident I have been cautious when dealing with strangers online and offline.
I use craigslist quite frequently for both buying and selling items, and I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting a scam. I’ve found that when it comes to electronics and other high ticket items on craigslist, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. A 6 year old hdtv for $150? Ok, not a bad deal. A brand new still-in-box hdtv for $150? Yeah, it’s probably stolen.
Now, here’s a follow-up question for you… how did you give them the credit card number? Phone? Email? Some other service?
Anyway, glad to hear the situation will turn out ok .
Phil Buckley says
Yeah – it was clearly a gamble. I figured the upside of getting what was advertised was worth the risk of having to cancel the card if it turned out to be a scammer.
Good follow-up question Jeremy. I sent it via encrypted email, with no other information.
Jay says
Hey Phil, I’d love to hear your input on a product that I’ve been working on called TrustMe.com. We’re building a proactive scam filtering email system. Drop me a line sometime if you’re interested in having a quick chat about it. Thanks!