I got a late-night text from an Oregon phone number asking if the trailer we are selling is "still available." They wanted to see it tomorrow - all the way from Oregon! Two red flags right there. The "Is the item still available?" is the other red flag. The "item"? ESL!
Anyway, I played along and the guy wanted something like the "AVR" report and gave a link to an unknown website that purportedly generates CarFax-like reports. I did not click on it. I searched online and (after bypassing Google AI) found several sites discussing the scam. Google AI helpfully chimed on, saying the site link was trustworthy! Google AI sucks.
Don't click on such links. The "VIN Report" site is fake and they want $25 for a "VIN Report" and for some reason, the buyer will only accept this one type of report. They basically steal your credit card number and whatever other information they can get.
Buying and selling a car or other big-ticket item by yourself can be stressful. Con artists play on your fear (that it will never sell, because you overpriced it!) or your greed (that you are going to make a lot of money selling it to a guy who immediately agrees to pay asking price, sight unseen). Or people think they are going to buy something for 1/10th its value. So people fall for these traps.
It sounds like a lot of work to steal credit card numbers, but since the texts are automated, it isn't hard to set the hook initially, and the scammers are working dozens of cons at one time, and if one plays out, so much the better.
Of course, the big red flag for me is that, generally speaking, trailers don't have VIN reports, and indeed, Craigslist and eBay both point out that the VIN number has no data associated with it. A Canadian VIN number, registered in the US, doubly so. So when these Bozos contact me asking for a "VIN report" on a travel trailer, well, the game is up before they start.
Got another one this AM - again from Oregon (why?) wanting to see the trailer tomorrow. When I asked them where they were located, they replied, "Jekyll Island)" including the half-parentheses they cut and pasted from the CL listing. Nice Try, I replied.
It is all part of the enshittification of the Internet. Since it is a worldwide web and still largely anonymous, it is easy for those overseas (or even domestically) to start scams, often automated, with a yield rate of 1-2% at best. But since you can send out texts to millions of people, the returns can be substantial.
Craigslist is pretty dead these days. Around here, it is mostly rednecks selling broken trash. "Two rotted fenceposts - $20" I kid you not. I listed some items there (bike rack, roof rack, Yakima stuff) and got NO responses. I tried Facebook Marketplace by re-enacting my old account (closed ages ago) and they let me put up ONE ad. Then they suspended the account, I guess because it had been deleted previously. They wanted an image of my driver's license, which I had sent before, and then a VIDEO of my face (so they can do a deepfake of me?) to restore the account. I took a pass.
I listed the trailer on fiberglassrv.com and the Escape Trailer forum (both owned by the same online entity, I discovered). But it is like advertising your BMW on a BMW forum. Everybody on there already has one! We paid $30,000 for the trailer, new (seven years ago), and people had theirs listed on the enthusiast sites for $40,000 to $50,000! I mean, yea, inflation, but really? You price yours realistically and you get shouted down because you are "destroying the resale value of their trailer!"
We ran into the same thing with my friend's C5 Corvette - the car no one buys, sells, or drives. "It's worth more than that! I'm not just giving it away!" Your kids will, though.
The trailer is on eBay with a "buy it now" price of $30K and a starting bid of $15K and two bids so far. I want it sold, not sitting on my lawn while I mow around it for several seasons, like they do in Central New York.
This is not entirely by chance, either. The car pricing guides (KBB, Edmunds, NADA, etc.) have changed or been sold and are now hard to use. You go online to see what your car is worth and are bombarded with ads to sell you a new car. Resale data is hard to find, if you can find it at all. And with all the scams and hassles of selling private party, companies like CARMAX and CARVANA make it sound appealing to just use their services instead.
Car dealers hate private party sales and no doubt would outlaw them if they could. They kind of sorta already have.
