I posted an ad on Craigslist last night for firewood with a 3 cord minimum (somewhere between 7 and 9 TONS of wood), and I got this reply today:
What’s the angle here? Do they send these emails out without looking at what is being sold?
They want your email address? By sending out a generic response like that, they get a real email. They could easily write a script to email that to every CL items sold.
I’d be surprised if this was just a ruse to get an email address. There are simpler ways to do that. I’m guessing if you respond, you’ll get some follow-up that involves a cashier’s check somewhere in the mix.
Sounds reasonable. You’ll get something like this:
“I am anxious to pick up the item but because of my schedule I am having problems finding time to stop by. To indicate my good faith and so that you do not find another customer, I have enclosed payment for the item. I am paying with a check from a customer for who I did some landscaping work and they owed me a little over the cost of your item, so to save time and paperwork I asked them to make the check out to you. Could you take the check and send me the remaining proceeds above the cost of your item and send them to me using Western Union? And you can keep $50 extra out of that for your trouble. Thanks.”
The check is bogus.
Get your email address and do what?
I know about the cashier check/money order over-payment thing, but it just seemed odd that they would respond like to firewood. I mean, that isn’t something you are just going to drop by and pick up without a very large vehicle and some help. Besides which, the price in the ad included delivery.
I was wondering if there was a new thing going around and/or if they just respond to every ad without even looking to see what the hell the person is selling?
I’m guessing the latter. It’s much quicker to just respond to all ads than to read each one.
And of course, now you have to answer them to satisfy our curiosity…
Notice how it says “your item” instead of “some firewood”. That’s a big big red flag there - they probably send that email to every seller they can find.
I also noticed that. Firewood is not an “item” - it’s a collection of items.
"Dear loshan,
I were so please to seeing you ad on the list of Craig. My Hubband be a Nigerian Prince. The goverbent want large amounts of firewood in exchange for free him. I pay you $95 million dollars for you wood, and my Hubband be Free! Please send you Social Security number and bank account number so I can send you money."
They’re harvesting your email for spammarketers in Russia and Canada who will sell you medications or perfume on line. I get these hits all the time when I post ads on CL selling car parts. Never had a follow up.
If you’re curious, why not just create a new email address, say at hushmail.com, and then reply back to them? Then you can watch and see what happens. And, if it’s nothing, you can just delete the account (or, in hushmail’s case, wait two months), so now they’ve got a useless account.
Is craigslist actually useful for anything but getting scammed or hooking up these days? seems like everything I see on there is either a scam when I’m looking for places to rent or things to buy, or when I do post an ad myself, the only responses I get are from spambots.
Guess it’s still good for hooking up and having anonymous sex though, so at least it isn’t completely useless.
I’ve done this a few times. If you have the time it can be fun.
I guess I’ve been lucky, because I’ve been able to sell some stuff (household items, tickets) and buy some stuff (tickets to sold-out events, mostly) without too much hassle. I haven’t gotten many (if any, now that I recall) obvious scammy replies, and anything that looked even a bit hinky, I just deleted.