Car Scam Alert

[bomelia]

Well, being in the market for a car, I ran into this scam. Mostly from Craigslist, but once off of Autotrader.com. First off, the old rule holds, too good to be true... etc. Also found one in the local on-line version of the newspaper classifieds (al.com).

http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-801-413-7311/26

Read some of this. The emails I recieved were just like these and from at least one listed on that website.

I have gotten pretty good at spotting them now. Low price on unbelievable car, car ads mislocated into other catagories... etc.

BTW, Ebay does NOT provide any services outside of its own venue (items sold on Ebay's site). Folks at ebay are aware of this scam.

Mike

[Paul F]

I think the guidelines for all ebay/craigslist type transactions are pretty straightforward these days; if you can't go to the owner's place and see it and make the deal face-to-face, or if it is not a person/dealer with a well established reputation, move on. I assume everything else is either a scam or a deal that will go badly. It just isn't worth looking for 'the deal'.

[Ron61]

Paul,

I agree. Some years back there was a 1969 Shelby GT-500 for sale on EBay that had the license plate blacked out with a red van setting in the street behind it. It had the owner listed as being in New York but the price was just really low for that car and I thought something had to be wrong. Later I was looking in another site that sold classic cars and there was the same Mustang, with the blacked out plate and red van in the background and the owner was listed as being in Florida. I later found out through a round about way that the car wasn't even for sale and the real owner didn't even know that it was being listed.

Ron

[bomelia]

My point was be alert... That's all. I would assume most of us are smart enough to know better.

I remember that Shelby deal, it had a name... What was it again?