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"Cheap" listings on craigslist - what's the deal with these?

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i am sure this is squarely in the category of "if it looks too good to be true..."


What's the deal with these? Is anyone falling for these? Or are they legit but probably only for parts or salvage titles or something? I see a few of these from time to time, and the pics and wording sure seem like normal private ad wording, but a car like this is going to be closer to $60k than 17.... is someone sitting there hoping to see who shows up with $17k to beat over the head with a maglite?

Tempted to offer him $20k 🤣

I notice its in the 'parts' section, but that could be a misstep on the part of the lister. No response to email, so perhaps someone that isn't clear on how CL responses work? If its a scam, I'm just not seeing the draw here....
 
Only thing "off" I can see is the Bose stereo thing. Tesla has never had Bose stereos. It could be a salvage vehicle, although it looks like its in pretty good condition. Seems like it would be worth a look. You never know, could be an explanation for it that you might still want to buy it...
 
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Common scam:

1) post a deal "too good to be true" on any item (Tesla in this case)
2) people blow you up offering a deposit to hold it until they can arrange travel
3) ????
4) Profit

They're getting a little bit craftier though and there's lots of scams using items priced closer to real market value but at the very bottom end. Most times they're obvious. Sometimes a little less so. You can usually out them by trying to arrange local meetup to see the item because that's the last thing they want. They want people who aren't local to send money which lots of idiots do which perpetuates these scams.

Craigslist cut the frequency down by requiring people pay $5 to list a car but now scammers are just using stolen info to do it anyway.
 
I assume they are fishing for deposits.

Often the details don’t match the car. I noticed an ad around here for a 100D but the photos were from a P90D.

if you want to dig deeper, save the photos and use tineye (reverse image search) to see where they really came from…
 
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I saw a bunch of these 2 years ago when I was shopping.

It's in the "parts" section to avoid paying the $5 listing fee. Red flag #1.

No listing of the VIN, no picture of the license plate (though other cars don't always show this), weird, minimal description that often doesn't match the car, often very few low res pictures, etc.
 
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Probably a scam like others said. I bet if you reach out you get some story about how it's actually in another state and the owner got a great job in another country and didn't have time to sell... Report the item too so others don't fall for it.

Probably in parts section because listing in cars for sale section has a fee to discourage spam listings.
 
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Probably a scam like others said. I bet if you reach out you get some story about how it's actually in another state and the owner got a great job in another country and didn't have time to sell...

Yep. “Seller” is almost always either military on deployment, or airline pilot who just moved to Canada or somewhere. They kindly offer to arrange shipping, you send deposit via some BS fake escrow site, and bye bye money :D
 
FYI, I was in the market for a Model S. (I actually ended up flying all the way to Florida from Colorado to pick up the car today). Therefore, I was looking through the Craigslist of almost every major US city to look for good deals on Model S listings. Those scam ads for $17,000 Teslas were in so many of the cities, it was obvious it was a scam. They basically posted the ad across a bunch of cities.
 
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