Originally Posted by
Silvestru
You're right and for that price, I would have risked it.
The thing that smelled scam was that he wanted the money first and only then he'll send the bike. When I tried reasoning with him about the trading rules and methods, his voice became snappy and so on.
E-Bay is almost always pay before shipment.
Craigslist is usually pay at pickup, and many sellers simply ignore out of town buyers. Those that do ship usually expect payment in advance.
Even on BikeForums, I usually pay in advance.
PayPal has two payment methods.
Business, and Friends & Family.
Friends & Family is free for direct bank withdrawals and no exchanges. But, they provide no purchaser protection.
Commercial costs a minimum of about 3%, but you get some amount of purchaser protection (you have to decide who pays the fees).
There are, of course, Craigslist scams. In part because a person can be flagged 1000 times, and never actually blocked from reposting.
The biggest issue with Craigslist are sellers that intentionally obscure their location. Not those that post in a neighboring city's Craigslist, but rather post the wrong city name and do a bait and switch to someplace 1000+ miles away.