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Thursday, March 6, 2008

How to Avoid Scams on Craigslist

Craigslist is a great online market place. Unfortunately it doesn't provide any protection for the buyers or the sellers. As a result, the buyers are frequently cheated by the fraud sellers. Sometimes the sellers also get scammed by the dishonest buyers.

Following are some tips to avoid scams of craiglist:
* Deal locally with people you can meet. This way you can avoid most the craigs list scams.

* Search the internet with the name and phone number, email or address of the person or company with whom you are going to deal. And see whether any negative comments on the net are found against them.

* Never send payment in advance via bank wire or western union, moneygram or any other service before receiving the goods.

* Be aware of fake cashier checks & money orders. Banks will cash them and then hold you responsible when the fake will be discovered later on.

* Never give your financial information (bank account number, social security number, ebay/paypal info, etc.) to anyone. Those who ask for such information are most likely fraud on craigslist.

* Avoid deals involving shipping or escrow services and know that only a scammer will guarantee your transaction.

* If someone is offering to sell a commodity on craigslist at much lower price than it's actual market value then be careful with the deal.

* Communicate via email instead of instant messengers. In case of email communication you will have proof which you may show to police later on, if required. But must give a phone call to verify phone number.

Check out this official page of craigslist. It may help you a lot.

While craigslist is free and a good place to find out anything at cheap price you need to be careful to avoid the scams on craiglist.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Many craigslist sellers are not individuals. They are actually businesses selling large numbers of items. Check out Confessions of a Craigslist Bicycle Trader on the bicyclespokesman blog (www.bicyclespokesman.com).It has good information for anyone interested in buying and selling on
craigslist.

Anonymous said...

http://www.CraigsPal.com has free and paid version, they are the only proper search tool for multi-city craigslist searching.

Anonymous said...

craigslist sucks...it has a terrible flagging system...i tried to sell on it and everytime i post i get flagged by the competition
i understand they need a system for spam but the current one doesn't work, they are still there while honest sellers get flagged

Anonymous said...

i know i flag any ad i do not see as worded correctly or if i just do not like it. When i hit reload and see it was flagged off i get a nice warm fuzzy feeling inside, its nothing personal i just like to flag ads off because i can.


Many users have multiple internet accounts and/or changeable ip's so one person can take down an ad.

Anonymous said...

very interesting

Anonymous said...

Common Scams on the internet:

• Overpayment for an item or services is the most prevalent scam currently in use. Typically the scam involves a buyer offering to pay by cashier’s check for well over the amount required and then requesting that the difference be returned. In the end, the cashier's check is fraudulent, and in addition to the seller losing the money sent to the buyer.

• A seller requests use of an online escrow service and sometimes requests the use of a third party escrow that is part of the scam.

• A seller requests a partial payment before shipping goods, assuring they trust you to send the remaining payment later. The item is never shipped, and the seller denies receiving payment (be wary of any deal that sounds too good to be true).

• A seller requests that you wire the money. Once you wire the money, they claim you have given them the wrong confirmation code so they cannot withdraw the money or ship the item. This is untrue. They have your money actually.

• In the Jobs section, users should be wary of employers requesting any payment prior to being hired. Never pay for employment. Those are scams.

• A potential employer requests personal financial information to do a credit check and/or charges you to run a background check. Never release your credit card information or checking account numbers for employment.

Source:
http://phoenix.backpage.com/online/classifieds/PopUp?page=CommonScams

Anonymous said...

Here’s another tip - instead of posting your phone number, be safe and use the site that allows you to receive calls anonymously - http://letscall.me/

Smith said...

Thanks dude, its really helpful information
I have seen lots if poster on net but there were no such information was available,

Hope this will really help me out

Anonymous said...

Very good Information provided in this post .
We do provide some kind of software that can search CL post of your interest.

we do use CL for posting our site.

but flagging is a issue.

http://scrappingexpert.com
Web Data Extraction Specialist
c

Anonymous said...

Great tips. It is sad that all the scammers ruin the fun of Craigslist, but there are still lots of great deals to be found. If you want to find them with ease, I recommend the Craigslist Reader. Search multiple locations and categories at once, save your searches, edit your lists, and more! Free 3-day trial.

http://www.motiont.com/craigslistreader.aspx

Unknown said...

The points you have mentioned about scams are really great ones...And I do agree with your points.Thanks for sharing some good resource.
craiglistpostingservice

Shyamsundar said...

It is very intrsting.no.of people have many internet account.so may any person among of them can take down ad.yeast infection

TestimonialShield.com said...

saw the suggestion for craigslist reader, but found a much better and FREE alert service for craigslist.org (and other classifieds websites). It's www.1stDibAlerts.com - I've already scored a bunch of highly 'competitive'/wanted items b/c of it.