Craigslist Scams
Scams Continued......
Ticket Scams:
Sports tickets scams:
There are a lot of people selling tickets on the internet and
Craigslist is a popular place for this. When buying tickets be very
careful and try not to get scammed. Here are a few good rules to
follow when buying tickets from any source over the internet whom
you do not know.
* Know what the tickets should look like. You would be amazed how
easily some people pass off completely bogus tickets to unsuspecting
buyers simply because they have no idea what a given teams tickets
are supposed to look like. If you frequent a given team and have
purchased tickets to their games before and you know for example
that tickets are always colored gold and purple, don't buy tickets
that are red and black.
Season Tickets for most NFL teams, have different players on EACH
ticket. Usually there is a large picture of the player on the field
of the ticket and a smaller picture in the corner. Season tickets
also have a raised and imprinted "SEASON TICKET HOLDER"
printed on them.
For Season Tickets ask for the sellers invoice to be sure that he
has paid for the entire season and not that there is a balance
remaining.
Check the account number against the numbers on the tickets.
Contact the ticket agent or team and make certain this account and
tickets are legit.
* Always meet in person and pay with a money order or cashiers check
to keep your account info private.
* If you deal only online, use PayPal to have some recourse if the
tickets are never mailed to you.
* If the person is sending the tickets by mail, insist that they use
a carrier of your choice (UPS, FedEx, etc) and that they insure the
package for the full value against loss. Too many times disputes
arise even in legitimate transactions when a package gets lost as to
who keeps the money. If the package is not insured then the problems
really start to happen. Many sellers believe that once it leaves
their hands that's the end of it. The law has a different view on
that, but then again the law doesn't help you collect the money and
it may wind up costing you more time and money to collect than it's
worth.
* Even being careful there are ways to get scammed. Some scammers
have phony tickets printed up and will sell 100 tickets for the same
seat. For the cost of a printing they can make a huge amount of
money.
Some may sell one pair of tickets to 100 different people. In the
time for the tickets to be mailed to you (or get lost in the mail)
the person can take your money and run. Even if you agree to pay
half up front and half upon receiving the tickets, some scammers are
happy to take the half and run. Half a ticket price multiplied by
100 suckers is still a pretty good haul.
Airline Ticket Scam:
This may not happen every day, but if it happens to you it's bad
enough.
An ad was posted recently on Craigslist for 2 round trip tickets to
(enter your favorite destination here). The tickets were listed for
half the price of what they normally sell for. If you contact the
seller they would give you some sob story about how they fell on
hard times and have to liquidate these tickets quickly or loose the
money. So here is what can happen in these cases. The seller books
the tickets online using a rapid reward system, or any online
ticketing method. The seller gives you the confirmation number. You
check it out and it seems to be legitimate so you wire them the
money. Do you see a trend here so far? Any time you see the word
Wire and Money used together, a
RED FLAG
should go up for you.
Anyway, you wire them the money. Then a few days, weeks later you go
for your trip. You show up at the counter and find that the
reservation has been cancelled. "WHY!?" you scream. Turns out the
reservation was made with a fraudulent credit card and was later
cancelled. Now you try and contact the seller and find that they
have disappeared.
How do you avoid this?
* Get an actual ticket and confirm that it has been paid for in
full.
* Buy from the air line directly.
* If it's too good to be true, IT IS!
The "I'm TOO busy" Scam!
What will they think of next you're probably saying? I'll tell
you. This is a short and sweet one (for the crooks that is). This
scam targets the sellers. You'll get an email from a person telling
you to call them to set up the purchase of whatever it is you are
selling. When you call them they are way too busy to talk, BUT yes,
they want to buy the item. Unfortunately you caught them at a bad
time and they can't even write down your phone number. Fortunately
there is a website that can help (isn't there always?). So they give
you a website address and ask you go to that website and put in your
phone number so they can call you back later and make arrangements.
Sounds good right? When you go to the website and put in your phone
number, later you NEVER hear back from the buyer, BUT next month you
will get a phantom bill for $9.95 on your phone. No one knows who
it's from or why but you just got taken for $10. Simple easy scam,
and way too hard to track down. We all know how helpful the phone
companies can be, specially the cell companies.
Scams continued.......
