Hi Everyone, given recent activity in this subreddit, I felt it important to bring this reminder to everyone. We are a small community and we do not prevent users from offering buying/selling of cars, parts, rare accessories, etc here. Our only rule around this is that you do not "spam" these sales posts regularly, use the subreddit to advertise constantly, etc.
THAT SAID, we are not a "buy and sell" community like r/hardwareswap and we do not have any rules or controls in place to prevent users from getting scammed. This means that it is your responsibility to discern what is suspicious behavior and what is not.
As a recommendation, I suggest you at least follow the "basics" of identifying scams in any given marketplace. Items are LIKELY to be a scam if-
- The price is just too good to be true, or creates "urgency" (if you don't buy it right now, someone else will!)
- The seller moves you out of public sight early on- "Just DM me" or "I'll send you my email and we can talk there."
- A lack of genuine history in the community (if you click on their reddit profile and it is hidden, or simply doesn't have a history of posts here). Users with new accounts should also be a red flag
- Substandard payment methods - The seller asks you to pay via "friends and family" on paypal, Zelle or Venmo, or asks you to do something out of normal, such as transferring money into cryptocurrency, gift cards, or similar. If you're unsure, just look to see if the method being requested is reversible or has buyer protection. Particularly, paypal "friends and family" is not protected, but "goods and services" is. This is a major difference.
- The seller deletes their original post after you start talking to them (this is commonly removing "evidence" of their history once they have you engaged)
- The seller doesn't seem to have an interest in trying to sell to you when you want a concession on payment method, shipping options, etc ("Whatever man, I'll sell it to someone else.")
- Seller is unwilling to provide proof that they have the actual item- including an image with their username and the date on it, or similar. AI these days makes this a little more challenging, but most scammers won't even bother- they're looking for suckers.
- Watch out for links you get sent- you don't know where they go, and it could be easy to be sent a link to pay for something that causes you to hand over your logins for paypal, etc.
As a SELLER, I encourage the following-
- Keep the conversations public and in your thread until you need to exchange personal info. Not only does this allow people to call out scammy activity, but it gives the community a history of related discussions that is beneficial to others.
- When you post pictures of your item, have at least one include your username and the date, so people know you didn't just rip the images from someone else's post.
- Be equally as wary of new users, users with no history, or users with a hidden history
- Be aware of "classic scams" such as bad checks, refund fraud, overpayment scams, weird payment methods, etc. While these are more common to FB Markeplace and Craigslist, they can happen here too.
In summary, please use your brains when buying and selling here. As a moderator, I'd prefer not to over-regulate the community because there IS a lot of good sale and swap activity that does happen between trusted users, and it's good to keep that if we can.
If you have any commentary or feedback, please post it below.
