How We Almost Got Scammed On Facebook Marketplace

How We Almost Got Scammed On Facebook Marketplace

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We almost got scammed on Facebook Marketplace and we want to share that experience so you know what to look for when it comes to scammers. Scammers are out there, so the more you know, the better you can protect yourself from scams.

Sourcing The Scam Item

As many of you know, we like to source items when we travel to pay for our trip. We bring our trailer and fill it up with items. It’s partly a game, and partly a tax write-off for us. We recommend checking with your tax expert as to whether you’re able to write off any road trips that you source on.

On one of our road trips, I was looking around on the apps and I found an amazing deal on a range, oven cooktop combo. They were asking $600 for it. I offered them $350. They wrote back pretty quickly and said, “Hey the lowest I can go is $400.” After looking at comps, I thought I’d be able to resell it on eBay for $4,000 to $5,000. It met my criteria of being able to 10X my purchase, so I said I could do the $400. I looked and saw they were six hours away and said that was too far. They wrote back with a thumbs up that no big deal. 

How We Almost Got Scammed On Facebook MarketplaceHow We Almost Got Scammed On Facebook Marketplace

When looking at my route to go back home, I realized it was only going to add three hours to our time home on the way back and we would’ve got $4,000 for that three hours so I messaged them back and said I talked to my wife and we’ll come through on this day to get it. The person said, “Yeah, no problem I can have my husband and my son help you load it. Please send me a deposit so I can hold it for you.”

Now that right there threw a little bit of a red flag because I don’t do deposits. I don’t send people deposits. I set up an arrangement for them, and then I go and do it. I’m very cordial with the process too. If I’m traveling, I let them know when I leave my house and what my ETA is and sometimes I’ll let them know when I’m an hour out. A lot of people ghost sellers on Facebook Marketplace, and I try to be very considerate about keeping them informed about my plans.

I told them I wasn’t comfortable doing that and didn’t know how to and I said I would ask if they still had it before we actually headed their way. They said that was fine.

Thinking About Scam Possibilities

We were at dinner with our niece who said she’d recently gotten scammed so we started thinking more about it. I pulled up the address they’d sent me and it was a small home. The oven was 48 inches, so it would have likely come from a larger home that was more high end because it was a commercial oven. That was a bit of a red flag. Then my niece showed us how to use Google Lens to do a reverse image search. If it’s posted on the internet somewhere, you know it’s someone else’s photo. We tried to do that with this item, but they’d turned the photo sideways and cropped it so it didn’t work.

I decided to message the seller and ask if I could call them because it was going to be a long trip and I had a few more questions. Her response back to me was, “You haven’t given me a deposit. How do you even know this is still available?” For somebody to write back to that was a huge red flag. Nobody would respond that way. It’s totally a scam. We were never going to give a deposit so we wouldn’t have gotten scammed, but we might have driven three extra hours for no reason. 

How We Almost Got Scammed On Facebook MarketplaceHow We Almost Got Scammed On Facebook Marketplace

Other Ways To Check For Scams

Reverse image search is one way to check for a scam. You can click on the person’s profile and see if they’ve posted the same item in multiple cities. You can see how long they’ve been a member of Facebook and whether they have friends on there. When I looked at her account, she hadn’t been registered for long and didn’t have any pictures or posts. If they just opened an account, no pictures, no friends, or anything like that, typically it’s a scam.

We recommend you don’t ever give deposits if sellers ask for them because you just don’t know if you will get scammed. If communication feels weird, don’t be afraid to ask to jump on a call with someone. If it’s legit, they’re more likely to take that call and talk with you. 

Let us know if you’ve dealt with scammers and how you handled them!

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FURTHER RESOURCES

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