I live in Memphis but scan the CL ads from other areas, and I NEVER see the truely stupid ads anywhere else that I see on my local CL. Just now, there was an ad for a 4 year old Lexus ES, for $2800. And no, that's not a lease or down payment, or I'm guessing they don't tell you it is until you answer the ad. 90% of the e-mail addresses you are supposed to respond to end in @gmail.com, but my sister has that service, and she believes it's legit.
So, does anyone else ever see these ads (I mean, they put the stupidly low price in the ad's headline, for cripsakes) or is it just my area being targetted ?
On my local Craigslist the scammers always seem to price their cars at $3800. It makes it easy to find and report them, at least.
mndsm
Dork
9/27/10 4:09 p.m.
Almost always scams. I tried to fish a super minty FD off one once. He was less than amused when I pointed out that the VIN said the car should be red, and the car was in fact, green.
It's not just your area - the two local-ish CLs around here (Reno and Sacramento) are full of these scams, too.
Mental
SuperDork
9/27/10 4:33 p.m.
gmail is legit, and free and huge storage. Thats why they use it.
Gmail is awesome, scammers are not...
I saw a 97 Camaro Z28 today with less than 12k miles on it. They were asking $2995. Yeah, right.
cwh
SuperDork
9/27/10 5:51 p.m.
It's everywhere. They seem to have a magic number just under 3000.00. All kinds of excuses why you can't see the car, they like to pretend they are US military being sent to bad places. but reality is many are in Eastern Europe, and are professional scammers. Play with them if you will, but nothing will come of it.
I see a lot of the scams at $2800.
Just a couple days ago I had to disappoint my dad when he thought he'd stumbled on an RX-8 for $2800.
I'm a firm believer that if something looks too good to be true...it's a scam, so I don't bother with these ads except to flag them on CL.
I've never understood why they seem to "pick" a number like $3,000 and stay just UNDER it. If they really wanted to pull a successful scam......well, I'm not saying what to do, they might start doing it. I just wondered why I never see this on the Nashville or Knoxville CL, or the Jacksonville, Fl Craigs. I figured it had to do with Memphis being the bankruptcy/forecloseure capital of the U.S. and folks figuring there were/are(?) a TON of easy "marks" here.
Lesley
SuperDork
9/27/10 7:37 p.m.
Someone told me that over a certain price, the cops will get involved for fraud. I seem to remember it being around the $4,000 mark, which explains all the $3800 2009 Audis and Bimmers I've seen on Craigslist.
$2800 is the magic number around me. I decided to "play" with the scammer on a $2800 NSX
