I recently found myself carless and shopping like there was no tomorrow. I had set a goal to make enough cash to buy my wife a car after the first of the year. To my surprise, I found myself looking for a car after the mechanic told me that my car would look good at the buttom of a lake… A boat anchor!! I was bummed, I love my 14 year-old Mercedes Benz. The list of repairs was exstensive and expensive so I took their advice and drove it into the lake.
So now I need a car, instead of buying my wife some wheels, we have to find me a car. I jumped right onto the trusted online shopping mall I like to call craigslist. There’s only one problem, this mall looks more like a flea market, but with convicts from other nationalities.
The nationals want you to send them money and they will ship you a car! Ship me a car!? Who does that!? Not this guy, I am not going to send you a check to help you out for something I have never seen or driven. Shhhyeahh! Right!!
These scammers used to do this with bank accounts and then moved up to telling you that you have an inheritance coming from some dude you don’t know. Now they want to ship cars to us for our inspection and pay them before they ship these “cars”. Craziness!
What makes this even funnier is that the website has at the top of the page “anything involving car shipping is a scam“. Not ‘maybe a scam‘ or ‘could be a scam‘ but, it is a scam!
Do people fall for this?
The other thing is, the people that think they are selling a 12 year-old block of gold on wheels and want top dollar for it. This is annoying because it never looks as good to us buyers as it does to the seller. “Oh, that will buff out“, “the miles are all highway miles” or my favorite “this car used to be my grandmothers“. There is too much to say here, but I will tell you that grandmas can spin donuts with the best of them…
So remember, when shopping on craigslist, patience, patience is the key to actually finding a great deal. When you do find that gem of a car, make sure that it was taken care of. If you cannot trust the seller, then bolt!… it wasn’t meant to be. But, if the seller shakes your hand with a tear in his eye, you can rest at ease, that man loved his car!
