Monday, June 9, 2008

Craigslist Car Scams: A few Tips from Carscoop

At some point we’re pretty sure that most of you have searched Craigslist for a used car – among other producst / services that is. We’ve been checking it out a lot lately as yours truly is (still) searching for an inexpensive RWD coupe. Unfortunately, there are plenty of scam artists on Craigslist who want nothing more than to con you into sending them money and/or your personal info.

The two golden rules as stated by Craigslist, is to deal with local folks that you can meet in person and never ever, send any personal information or money to some random guy you contacted through e-mail. Most of the times scammers are flogged by users and removed from Craigslist, but there are some cases that this doesn’t happen.

For example, look at the Nissan 300ZX pictured above that has 55k miles priced at a mere $4,100. Sounds like a pretty great deal right? Wrong, it's a scam. We’ve been flogging it for the past few days without any success. It’s still there. -Continued after the jump

But how can you detect a scam? Well, for one, email the seller asking for the exact location of the car if its not stated in the post. If it's a scam, the poster will a) not reply or b), he will tell you that the car is located somewhere far-away and that he will ship it to you once you wire him the money.

However, before we send an e-mail to inquire additional info, the first thing you should do is perform a search on Google –eg. "Nissan 300ZX - $4100". Usually, scammers post the same exact article/header/pictures in several cities, which means that if you find the same car located on Craigslist in New York and Los Angeles, then something fishy is going on.

If you’re looking for a special model like the 300ZX, you can also perform a quick check on eBay Motors. That’s how we discovered that this particular green 300ZX located in the Boston area on Craigslist is also for sale in Sarasota, Florida with a “Buy it Now” price of $9,700...

Links: Craigslist & eBay

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