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When I was selling one of my bikes I went to one of the scam VIN sites. Buried in the fine print was, if you bought one VIN report, you were actually signing up for a year of access at $xx.xx dollars per month...

(01-14-2021, 06:39 AM)decarmine_imp Wrote: [ -> ]When I was selling one of my bikes I went to one of the scam VIN sites. Buried in the fine print was, if you bought one VIN report, you were actually signing up for a year of access at $xx.xx dollars per month...

Ooo, ugly.

Good tip.

I've run into that VIN scam before. I told the guy if he wanted a VIN report, he'll have to buy it. Never heard from again. They're trolling for suckers.

I got burned by that scam. Took me a bit to see the light.

Gah!

Ouch! Commiserations, Rboe.

I like to scam the scammers. My elderly neighbor was selling a hot tub online and someone tried to use the “I want to buy it but I can’t come look at it right now, I’ll send you extra money blah blah...” trick on him. He almost fell for it. When he started telling me the story I convinced him it was a scam.

We decided to have some fun with it. We told the scammers where and when they could pick up the hot tub and that there was money on the way to them etc, (fake addresses, fake account numbers) all of it false! There were back and forth emails for a couple weeks, setting up logistics that didn’t exist etc, until the scammers got frustrated and finally figured out that THEY were getting scammed.

(01-21-2021, 08:15 PM)Blockhead_imp Wrote: [ -> ]I like to scam the scammers. My elderly neighbor was selling a hot tub online and someone tried to use the “I want to buy it but I can’t come look at it right now, I’ll send you extra money blah blah...” trick on him. He almost fell for it. When he started telling me the story I convinced him it was a scam.

We decided to have some fun with it. We told the scammers where and when they could pick up the hot tub and that there was money on the way to them etc, (fake addresses, fake account numbers) all of it false! There were back and forth emails for a couple weeks, setting up logistics that didn’t exist etc, until the scammers got frustrated and finally figured out that THEY were getting scammed.

Yeah, I've been tempted a few times.

When phone call scammers were a big thing, I once "invested" my time and asked why the caller does this for a "career". Long story short, the call ended with the scam caller sobbing and wishing or planning to go back to school and retrain for a better skillset.

I felt sort of bad the last time I sold a vehicle on Craig's. Last year, after my Dad in Law passed away, I cleaned up his car and listed it. It was a low-buck transportation piece, and I got slammed within an hour with about a dozen responses, most I'm sure being auto wholesalers offering low-ball deals. All had a story that either said "I'm looking for a car for my Mom, I'm looking for a car for my Son, I'm looking for a car to make deliveries", or something similar.

I kept deleting the messages, but in the mix was one poor fellow who actually was looking for a car for his son. He kept responding, eventually saying "What can I do to convince you that I'm not a scammer?" When he texted me a picture of money fanned out on a table, I called him. He said his son had been looking for this particular year and color, and was excited to see it. I had to apologize, saying that his message sounded too much like the slew of generic low-ballers who had pummelled me.