I haven’t had any major problems with craiglist (beyond a dozen people being shocked that the CRT monitor I was giving away for free wasn’t a flat panel) until a couple weeks ago, when I started trying to find a place to live by campus for this summer. The first seven people I contacted emailed back with some variation on: “Your name is Joey? Are you a boy? I’m afraid my roommates only want me to rent to a girl. Sorry!”
People, if you’re going to exclude almost half of the student body from renting from you, SPECIFY IT IN YOUR DAMN AD! Thank you.
My problem is that it was offered as humorous in the context of this thread. People here are complaining about douchebags on craigslist wasting their time with stupidity. The linked “humor” sets up phony offers on craigslist for the purpose of jerking people around, sort of like an extended prank phone call.
As I alluded to before, if prank phone calls are your thing, you’ll probably find a lot of humor in that stuff. It seems entirely orthogonal to the point of this thread, though.
On the subject of the VIN, it is public information, stamped on the car in multiple places. So anyone who comes to see the car is going to see it. Hell, they’re going to have to check it to verify that you’re actually transferring title to the hunk of steel and plastic they’re planning to drive away. I’m sure most people don’t bother, but they should.
I understand not putting it in the ad if you want to require just a bit more effort on the part of a scammer. I have had people who didn’t want to give it to me over the phone, but I always just explain that I’m going to run a carfax report, and that the VIN is printed in an easily viewable place, and everyone gives it to me. But at least they know I’m a person and not a script.