I had 2 Karastan rugs for sale years ago. I'm in Maine, and they sold to people in GA and VA! One even sent me heavy plastic UPS rug packing bags with instructions. They were large rugs, and not cheap to ship, but both of those sales went beautifully.

Today, there may be much more scamming. Is the item you're selling rare, or collectable? Was there any reluctance on their part to pay by USPS money order?

Is this something that the person can not get in CA?
Is it something difficult to ship ?
Are they asking you to ship it to a POBox ?

Don't ship until all cash is in hand.
Use a business address of yours or a friends as a return address.

They are collectibles. He offered to pay by check or paypal. He didn't seem reluctant at all when I mentioned a postal money order. He said he would get it tomorrow.

One thing that's making me nervous is the fact that I had stated a price or best offer. He kept going up on the amount he would pay for me to ship it. Something about it is making me very nervous. I've only done a couple of other CL sales and both of them were in person and with cash.

I wouldn't do it, unless this is a very rare item that someone would search across the country for.

Read CL's scam page: http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams

It says, "FAKE CASHIER CHECKS & MONEY ORDERS ARE COMMON, and BANKS WILL CASH THEM AND THEN HOLD YOU RESPONSIBLE when the fake is discovered weeks later."

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams

Oh~I meant a friends business address.
And if it's high value require they insure it.
Insurance is pretty cheap.

I had read on the seller's board at ebay that it's better to get money orders from the post office. The sellers there say you can take it to the post office and they will cash it. Supposedly they are able to tell if it's real.

I don't know how true this is though.

The items aren't rare at all, but I have them listed at a very good price.

Thanks for the advice everyone! Well, I definitely won't be dealing with him. I received an e-mail from him with his name and address to send the items to. Google is my friend...apparently, in the past he was arrested for credit card scams.

No! I had about the same thing that about happened to me....said they were sending me a check, I need to deposit it, keep the amount owed to me and send the rest via western union.... I took it to local law enforcement and was told the Check was a fraud and it was a scam!

Beware!...if I had deposited it, the check would have bounced and I would have been out of the entire amount.

Phoggie, I had heard of something like this before. Thank goodness you didn't try to deposit it!

I thought a money order from the post office would be safer, but I'm sure he would probably have found a way to scam me with it.

I'm so glad I decided to try searching Google. There he was in all his scamming glory.

You have great instincts!

If you want to deal with someone that's not local, always use Paypal or have them wire the money directly to your bank.

A friend was scammed with a postal money order. She accepted it, they took the item, she deposited it into her bank account and found out days later that it was fake.

The scam is that they send you a check drawn against a foreign bank. The amount is to cover the purchase price and the cost for their "shipper" to pick the item up and take it to them. Once you have the buyer's check, he asks you to send the amount for the shipping, to his "shipper" so the shipper can proceed. The "shipper" will only take a cashiers check drawn against your account, or a money order. You send off the shipping money and it takes almost a month before you find out the check the buyer sent you was no good.
Last year I had a great time for almost two weeks with one of these guys. I had a bookcase for sale and he claimed he was on the other side of the country. I agreed to all of his instructions, but told him I had to get my books packed up before I could do anything about the sale. Every day he would email me, asking for my address, and every day I would answer with a completely inane letter saying stuff like I didn't have enough bins to pack up my boxes, did he know where I could get bins at a good price, I feel like we are friends now, etc. He kept asking me over and over to give him my mailing address, so I finally gave him the address of the atty general. He did send a check there, lol (and it cost him a few dollars to do it because he sent it certified) but they rejected it because there was no one there by the name I had given him. I called the AG and they had no interest in pursuing the guy as they said these guys are always form out of state and not worth their time. Anyway, the guy was writing me back telling me that the check could not be delivered, and I just kept answering him with unrelated babble about the packing of my books. He got extremely frustrated with me, lol, and he finally quit writing to me.

I received a call through a operator relay service like hearing impaired people use right after I listed a common, average tv armoire for the third time from someone saying he was in another part of the country but wanted to purchase the piece and pay shipping. At first I said ok as I was thrown off by my first operator relay call. Then I became suspicious. Why would someone from thousands of miles away want to purchase something CL lists are usually flooded with when I couldn't even sell it around here? When the guy emailed me asking about the details and money order, I ignored him. That's when I read the warning Lolauren posted.

Good for you for listening to your inner voice!

Ooh, was he a Nigerian prince? :)

I get scammers like this responding to virtually everything I post. As a matter of fact, I don't think I've NOT gotten this scam multiple times.

One thing you can try is to specify what they must put in the subject line of their message, or that they must call. I don't know if this works (I prefer to deal via email b/c I can do it anytime, whereas phone I'm mostly limited to evening hours), but I see more & more people doing it.

Glad you avoided it, and good thinking to google the guy's info!

Just reporting an experience with a USPS money order...you can buy them but they won't cash them. I received a refund from a seller on Etsy because what she sent me arrived damaged. She had insured it before shipping. I took the USPS money order to my post office and they told me it had to go through my bank.

When you post an ad on Craigslist you get this warning:

WARNING!! *** WARNING!! *** WARNING!! *** WARNING!!

Please be wary of distant 'buyers' responding to your ad! Many sellers receive replies from scammers hoping to defraud them through schemes involving counterfeit cashier's checks and/or wire transfers. These checks will clear the bank, but the person cashing the check will be held responsible when the fraud is discovered. More info on scams can be found at this web address:

www.craigslist.org/about/scams