Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug Show. My name’s Doug Cunnington, and today we’re gonna talk about selling stuff on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace. I’ve had a little more experience with this in the last few weeks, and I’m gonna tell some stories. I. The day that I’m recording this, it’s uh, it’s actually April 7th and this episode should come out next week.
And the thing is, I haven’t recorded an episode in a while. I’ve been traveling and quite busy, like all through Q1. So I actually recorded a shitload of stuff in January and February and then March was pretty much hands off That said during some of my travels. Actually, during all my travels, I brought my recording gear just in case, and then never recorded anything, which was kind of cool.
I mean, I, I did get ahead quite a bit. I mean, I think I was something like six to seven weeks ahead and basically. Now I I ran out of the full buffer in here. Here we are. But I got some great stuff to tell you about and it turns out perhaps I needed a little bit of a break. One main reason is I lost my voice for about I.
I mean, it was about a week. So one of my travels, I’ll tell you all about my travel but one place that I went is the EconoMe Conference in Cincinnati. I actually met a bunch of listeners, some from this show, but some from my other podcast, mile High FI. And then I got to see a bunch of my friends, and this is a very social conference in.
Basically I showed up on like Thursday afternoon and then each night I went to a place that was very loud and I, I talked, basically yelled for like a few hours as I was having conversations. ’cause as my, my voice gets weaker, it’s still a little scratchy right now, but as my voice gets weaker from overuse, then I try to talk even louder.
And let’s face it, if you’re drinking alcohol. Beer specifically in my case, then it just makes it worse. It just aggravates the whole situation. And I, I did pretty much stick to beer except for one time late at night. My friend bj, I was like, is that bourbon? Like, did you get bourbon? He’s like, yeah, you want some?
So he, he poured me a little but much heavier pour than what I was anticipating. Especially at like, I mean, let’s face it, it was two in the morning, so that was silly, silly thing to do. Anyway, I lost my voice for a little while and the weirdest thing is like my voice was scratchy while I was there. Again, within like 12 hours of arriving in Cincinnati, my voice was scratchy.
But then after I got back home on Monday, my voice got worse each consecutive day until about. Friday. So for like four days after I got home, I wasn’t even talking that much. I was just whispering at my wife, which she doesn’t like that too much. She’s like, I hate when you fucking whisper. Anyway, so I lost my voice.
I wasn’t able to record, and I’m like, I’m smart enough now. I didn’t even schedule anything for that week as I anticipated my voice would. Not be in great shape. But it actually took even longer for it to return. And like I said, it’s still a little scratchy, so, well, I learned my lesson, but probably not ’cause I’ve, I’ve done this before.
But one thing that’s helpful is that other people remind me, but I don’t know, I’m gonna make that happen. I’ll just need to like, wear a tag that says like, don’t let me talk or like, tell me to go to bed or something like that. But anyway. I have, uh, some notes here that I keep looking at, and I’ll tell you what I sold on Craigslist slash Facebook Marketplace.
I’ve listed in both places, so I’m gonna slowly, I’m gonna weave in and out of the story. So I have been purchasing guitars from Craigslist for the last couple of years and mostly focusing on purchasing them, but, once I actually made a trade, like someone was looking for something that I exactly had and I was able to trade straight up, I think both of us got a pretty decent deal overall.
I feel like monetarily from like what I invested into the initial guitar, which was a, it was like a 1939 recording king. Carson Robinson Model K. So I, I traded that for a national resonator and it was from 97, so not nearly as old, but it had a cool, cool vibe. So anyway, we traded straight up and that worked out well.
So been doing some guitar stuff and most recently. I actually had a series of emails that went out from my friend Shauna Newman over at Skip Blast, where I documented how I purchased a guitar a couple years ago, played it and then sold it. I. I also bought another guitar, which was on consignment at a shop where I was able to negotiate and get a, what I think is a pretty good deal on that one as well.
So anyway, guitars, but I just sold something even bigger on Craigslist, and that is my truck. So I’ve had a Ford F-150 for I guess 18 years. So I purchased it about 18 years ago. It’s a 2005, so it’s actually, you know, 20 years old. But I’ve had it for a very long time and it was a little sad to sell, but that is one of the main stories I’m gonna tell.
It went really well overall, and I will tease a little bit because I, I, I checked out like the Kelly Blue Book value, which. That’s what they say to do, like check Edmonds and Kelly Blue Book and, and other things. And you could sort of put in the condition of your vehicle and kind of gauge it based on like if, if it’s in super good condition, the number of miles, the options and all that kind of stuff, and kind of get a reasonable estimate of what the value is.
And I would say. Up until maybe 2020 or so it, that was probably fairly accurate. Now the other thing is I’ve had my truck for 18 years, so I don’t transact in the vehicle space very often. So I’m assuming that Kelly Blue Book and other. Estimators were reasonable up until 2020 when Covid hit. And then we ended up with some inflation supply chain issues.
The used car market kind of, uh, jumped and I thought about selling it back then. And the thing is, I. With Kelly Blue Book for certain cars, for older cars, it’s kind of hard for the data to even be there for them to make an estimate. So, I got significantly more than whatever Kelly Blue Book mentioned in there.
So I. As we’re weaving in and out, I didn’t list my truck until I got back from some of the travels, so I’ll highlight some of the stuff that I was doing in Q1. So we were up in Estes Park, like right at the beginning of the new year. So it was after New Year’s. That means there weren’t nearly as many people, but it was still decorated with lights and Christmas tree and other stuff like that.
But there were very few people there. I. A lot of you know, resort or vacation towns will get busier over the holidays. So Thanksgiving, Christmas, new Year’s, people are on vacation, they’re gonna rent a house out there, they vacation out there, and there’s just a lot of people there. Right after everyone’s going back to work, they’re going back to school.
But if you have a flexible schedule like we do, then you can go to places. That are, it’s, it’s like just after the busy season. So the downside was many restaurants and stores didn’t have normal hours, or they were just closed because not many people were around. But on the plus side, it’s not like I’m gonna eat at fucking every restaurant in the town.
I don’t need like 30 restaurants to be open. I’m gonna eat out like twice, maybe over the course of a few days. So it’s not, not a big deal. Coffee shops are open, like there’s other, you know, there’s normal businesses and then like the, the city and municipality workers, like they work and they go to the coffee shop and there’s other, like, not everything’s closed, but just some things are closed.
So it doesn’t bother me at all and actually gives it kind of a, a more calm and chill vibe. I don’t need a lot of energy and stuff going on around me. So we’re up in Estes Park. A few weeks after that, I went to Breckenridge. A friend of mine has a very nice house up there, and he occasionally lets some friends stay there.
And I invited a couple of my buddies, just a, a sort of a guy’s weekend, except it was during the week. I. We have flexible schedules. So we went up there and it was, you know, the height of ski season. I’m not a skier, but we snow shoot each day and it was awesome. It was actually extremely cold up there, like negative degrees, like negative 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
So very cold, but it was quite sunny. The weather was good. You bundle up and you bring the right gear and even. Harsh temperatures are not that bad. Now the thing is, it wasn’t windy. I had some friends that were up in the vicinity a couple days later and it was fierce winds. The temperatures were about the same, but it was like a 30 mile an hour wind and not sunny.
And they said it was kind of miserable. So we lucked out. It was awesome. I actually brought a guitar up. My buddy is a musician and actually I’ll link up Chris. Was releasing an album. So he’d finished it up and just need to run I guess create the masters and, and do some other audio engineering stuff.
So I think the first single’s out, and I’ll actually link up to it, I need to make sure I check in with Chris, but he brought a guitar. I brought one. He’s a very talented musician and I’m a bit of a. I’m a hobbyist, so it was fun to listen to him play and he has a super nice guitar. I was able to play that and I brought one of my resonators, which is, uh, they’re, they’re a bit unique people.
A lot of people don’t have those, so he had fun playing that as well. So we were up there. The other big trip was going to a couple national parks. So this was in March. Let’s see. Yeah, it was like few days into March. Uh, the dates don’t matter. Few days into March, but my wife and I and Georgie, we headed, we headed down to, uh, death Valley and to Joshua Tree National Parks.
Very cool. Bit of a drive, you know, it takes about two days to get out that way in. I mean, we like road trips, so it’s, it’s no big deal. So we were able to stop in Utah along the way and get, get some rest there and then head on down to Death Valley, which was super cool. We stayed in the park there and I think it was called like Stove Pipe Wells.
That sounds right. Stove pipe wells. It’s near the, near some sand dunes. There’s a lot of sand out there. A lot of sand in the desert. That’s pretty much all. There is a couple Joshua trees and other cacti. I think there’s bugs, but we didn’t see much wildlife. Overall. Super cool trip. I have not been to that part of the world at all.
And I, I mean, I think you could probably. Like many national parks, stay there for weeks and explore and really kind of take your time. But it was a fairly quick trip. We were only in Death Valley for about, I don’t know, 24 hours, 36 hours, something like that. And then headed down to Joshua Tree. We stayed in the town of Joshua Tree, which is just down the street from the national Park.
And we were able to spend some time there and see some of the main things that you could check out, including a very cool Oasis, I think it was called. 45 Palms oasis and just really, pretty neat. I mean, I, I don’t know how to describe it other than like, you’re walking along this sort of deserty area and then all of a sudden there’s like, there’s palm trees and, and trees and, and other vegetation, and there’s a bunch of birds right there.
And it is like a little oasis, just like in. The bugs of Bunny cartoons that, that we recall from our youth. So a lot of stuff out there and I was like, I, I think I do wanna sell my truck, but I wanna make sure that I have some other stuff closed, including like all the travel closed out. So I was like, when I get back from Cincinnati, the econome conference, I’ll go ahead and list my truck.
Now I mentioned earlier that I. I went to Kelly Blue Book and I tried to get an estimate. When I did that, the value of my car was, I think somewhere between, they give you a range, right? 3,200 to 3,800, somewhere right around there. And I was like, that seems a little bit low. And I remember. Telling my wife, I think I could probably get like 3,500 to 4,000 or so.
I think it’s a little bit low. I think I can get 4,000 now. A couple months ago when I was talking to her, I was like, I think I might be able to get 5,000. But as time went on and I did the Kelly Blue Book stuff, I was like, I think it might only be 4,000. Now, one feature that they do have on Kelly Blue Book and some other.
Estimation websites, they have a sort of a, like buy it now offer where you put in the specs, you even put in your vin, your vehicle identification number, and then they will make some offer and then give that. Information to dealerships in your area, and then people will call you and see if you wanna do a deal.
And I was familiar with it because I saw it a few months ago when my neighbor had, uh. Chevy Volt that he was thinking of selling and I was like, ah, maybe I’m interested in it. So I actually drove it and it wasn’t, it wasn’t good for me. I was just like, ah, maybe I’ll get a good deal. The guy takes really good care of his car.
And I was like, this could be a great vehicle. Some of my friends have a Chevy Volt. And I eventually realized, ah, it’s not really for me unless I can get a really good deal, which is never. A great way to make a buying decision where you’re like, I’m gonna buy this because it’s very cheap. It’s like, buy it ’cause you need it or you want it for a specific reason, but like buying something ’cause it’s a good deal.
I don’t know. It, like, if that’s all you’re into, then it could be okay where you’re like, I buy cheap stuff and then I, I flip it and I sell it, but I need there to be a little bit more to it than just a good deal. So anyway, my friend, my neighbor, he. Did the buy it now via Kelly Blue Book and he got a great offer.
It, it was actually exactly what I assumed that the retail value was and he got what the retail value was, which kind of shocked me. I’m not sure exactly what was going on other than the fact that it is a. Hybrid vehicle. So for people that don’t know the Chevy Volt, it has a, um, it’s actually a gas generator.
It’s not a, um, the same sort of traditional engine. So the, the, the gas generator powers the electric motor and batteries and stuff. So it it’s kind of a cool, cool idea. It, if you’re not ready to like get a pure ev, then it’s a good like. Way to bridge the gap. So anyway, my friend got a great offer.
Exactly what I thought he would get for like if someone was buying it retail. So we got the retail price. The only way that I could imagine that the dealers were able to do that is if there was some ev subsidy that they were able to take advantage of, which totally makes sense. ’cause when I was looking it was about 4,000 bucks.
So that would probably be enough to cover. Their high offer. ’cause it didn’t make sense to me. I was like, I would maybe pay like 9,000 for it. So luckily I didn’t go that route. All that to say, I was like, Hey, what will they give me for my F-150? And it was 1800 bucks. And I was like, what the fuck are you outta your mind?
Like, I think. You can’t even buy a non-running F-150 for $1,800. I mean, that is absurd. So, or if, I mean it would have to be falling apart. So $1,800, I was like, this is a non-starter. The thing that I was frustrated with is, um, so I got a call and then I got another call and then I got an email and some of them were from the same dealer.
This was. Like within 12 hours or so. So apparently like if you put in your info, then your info goes out to all these dealers around here and they’re just like, boom, boom, boom. And like I said, it must have gone to like multiple people at the same dealership, which I’m like, why the fuck would I want to hear from multiple people at the same, I like, this is crazy.
Like. Get it together. So I did. I called the people back ’cause they were doing their job right. So no issue with that. They were doing their job. And I was like, not interested, thanks for following up called, hey, not interested. Thanks for following up. You can remove me from the list. So all that was good, but I was just like, oh man, if you had like a really sought after like car, they would be really handing you.
But mine was low pro, I mean 1800 bucks, like that’s a pretty low profit. But they were all over it. Tenacious. So let’s get to, uh, let’s get to the point here. When I sold the guitar, which was a a Martin Double OTT or double O 15, I put in tons of detail. So I told a little story how I got the guitar. I gave some information about the condition of the guitar.
I gave some prose. One of the biggest things, and this was the perhaps the biggest takeaway of listing both the guitar and my truck. I not only listed the pros, but I listed the cons. I gave them as much information as I possibly could about issues any gripes that I have. And the thing is like if I don’t.
Like if I don’t tell them someone is gonna look over the truck and they’re gonna find the flaws. But if I just lay it out and I say, Hey, there’s some scratches up here. Some of the clear coat is flaking up from the area above the grill and, and provide a picture, I. Oh yeah, there’s some interior issues with the, uh, like the mid console, it’s just the plastic broke because it’s sitting in the Colorado sun each day and heating up to whatever, like 120 degrees or whatever it gets into inside the car there.
So there’s a, a little bit of an issue there. There’s also, I can’t remember some of the other issues, but it’s like, Hey, there’s a, there’s a big scratch here. There’s dings and bumps and whatever. So. If you let them know what the issues are and you’re straightforward about ’em, it builds a huge amount of trust.
So essentially when it, when it came down to it the person didn’t find any issues that I like, didn’t outline. I mean, I don’t think there there are any others, right? As far as I know, like the last time I brought it in, they. They told me, Hey, there’s these things wrong with it. And I did all of those things.
And then there’s new tires. And by the way, there’s a battery that I bought two years ago and there’s, uh, you know, hardly any miles on the oil change, but it’s been a while, so you may wanna get the oil change. So all, all this stuff I just disclosed ahead of time and I wasn’t sure what to list it at because Kelly Blue Book told me, you know.
3,500 bucks, give or take a few hundred dollars, and I thought that that’s wrong. So what else can we do? Right? We can look at the other listings out there, which is what I have been doing for the past couple months. Just I would pop in and take a look. I would look at F1 fifties within, I would say like two years, either way around the same model year, and a couple things popped out.
Number one, any car. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll keep saying car, but I mean, my truck, the truck that’s 20 years old. That’s an F-150. Typically you’re gonna have 200 to 250,000 miles or more. My truck only had 139, so it way fewer miles, about a hundred thousand miles less than many of the other cars. And. The other thing is if it was a, if it was a truck that had a similar number of miles, it wasn’t that old.
So trucks that had 125 to 150,000 miles, they were like eight years old. They were six to eight years old, give or take. A lot of times these are work trucks, so especially, you know, mine wasn’t a fancy model. It was pretty much, it was one of the, the bare bones models, so it was like one of the two lowest trim lines.
It had like manual windows and manual locks. So that is very uncommon these days. Hell, I don’t even think you can get a car now that has like manual locks or windows. So anyway, this is a little older school kind of truck and it doesn’t have like the bells and whistles and all that kind of stuff, so. It was really interesting looking because when you look at the, you know, the more modern trucks from say 20 18, 20 15, like around there, they’ll have a similar number of miles, but they’ll be much newer and thus a lot more expensive.
So I was in this sort of weird. No man’s land of the number of miles and the model year and the overall condition, because some of the other listings that I would see it would be F-150, say 2005, just like mine. It would say 200,000 miles. It would be. Whatever, $2,500. It was like it runs, but it needs a new transmission or it runs, but there’s some kind of issue with the radiator and something, something.
So it’s like many of these trucks, they were cheap, but they had some kind of major issue. Needs a new engine. Like I saw that a couple times. I was like, okay, my truck’s sort of in a different kind of area here. The other thing to remember when you’re looking. It what’s listed out there, just, just like on like reverb or you’re over there on eBay or Facebook marketplace, whatever is listed doesn’t mean that’s what people are getting for it.
So if. If the person is doing this correctly, then they, they’ll list it a little bit higher and they’ll have some negotiation room in there, which I knew. And actually I, I played it fairly chill for as much as I enjoy negotiating and wheeling and dealing and all that kinda shit, I played it pretty straight.
And I accepted the offer because immediately the offer was good. So. The other thing, when you look through and, and you spend time studying these listings, so not only is the asking price not what is being paid, it’s usually significantly lower or at least lower, depends on the listing price and all the details.
But like whatever is listed, that that is not the value. That is just what things are listed for. And as you look through these. The, the listings are horrible. They are absolutely horrible. In fact, it’s like the notes for this podcast. I put it on a normal three by three post-it note here, and it’s just like, there’s not even that much.
Like some people write a little bit more, but. Typically what you get is Ford F-150 2005 and good condition and the number of miles. Like they don’t tell you shit. You might be able to get the, the trim line and, and couple other details like that, but they hardly put any information there. So when you look at it, you’re like.
I, is this a good deal or not? I can’t even tell further. There’s like one or two pictures and you’re, you’re thinking, did they take this with their flip phone? Like, what, what’s going on? I can’t even see, see the truck here? A few of them will have more photos, which is helpful and you can kind of get a sense, you know, vi visually.
That’s very helpful. Now, if you’re on Facebook, they actually encourage you to do a video and they say, Hey, marketplace listings with a video get viewed, blah, blah, blah. More times and it’s, it’s certainly more engaging, right? Like you, you could record audio and, and that sort of stuff. I didn’t do a video in this case, but I had a lot of photos, so I’ll back up just a second.
And mention, I put all those sorts of details about the, the truck and, and how I got it and why I’m selling it. I did list out the specs so you can go to most websites with, uh, you know, the estimation of the value or the manufacturer’s website. But basically you get all the specs, so it’s like curb weight, horsepower, other stuff like that, that people carry care about.
You can just copy and paste those in. Pretty straightforward. I put in, you know, sort of the condition, the, the good parts, the bad parts condition inside the exterior condition, that sort of thing. I also had some extras that I was going to include, so in this case I had. A lot of tie-down straps. So it’s a truck, I’ve hauled stuff all over, and you need these ratchet tie-down straps.
And I had a number of them that I’ve accumulated over the years plus like a towing strap. So this is like a heavy duty, a strap basically, that you could, you know, put it on the, the hitch and I could like, like pull a car or, or. Pull something if I needed to. Right. And I was including all that stuff. So it was probably, you know, a hundred dollars worth of tie down straps and stuff like that.
I also had snow chains, because I lived in Bozeman, Montana for a few years where it snows a lot. Like, I think it’s, it’s like a hundred inches a year or something like that. Fairly significant. And my truck needed chains. It’s a two wheel drive truck, so I was like, I’m throwing in these chains. Chains and the, the chains, I think if you buy ’em new now these are used of course, but if you buy ’em new, I think they’re like $7,000 or something like that.
So another little value. And I set those in the back of the truck, took a picture so you could see, hey, there’s all these tidy on straps and extra accessories and stuff like that. So had the extras and then I listed the issues. Nothing major, but like there were. A couple little things superficial inside and outside of the car.
There was also like the, the radio volume knob doesn’t work perfectly, so sometimes when you’re actually turning it down, the volume goes up, so you kind of have to jiggle it a little bit, but not a huge deal. But I disclose that and a couple other minor things, the details of which don’t matter. So when you list something on.
Marketplace or Craigslist, the scammers will come outta the woodwork and people get really frustrated with this. And I think if I had like a, a business that relied on being on Craigslist or Facebook all the time, it would drive me crazy. But. I knew that I was going to have to deal with this, so if anything seemed weird, even if you don’t know why, it’s weird, it’s probably a scam and you can get out of it.
There are a lot of people that are just like, hi, is this available? And it’s like, yeah, it’s available. I didn’t lose my shit over that. Sometimes I’ll see postings where it’s like, if the listing’s still up, it’s still available, like all in caps and the person’s obviously getting frustrated, but the thing is.
It’s okay if people ask that. You could just say, yes, I have some offers already, or, yes, do you have any questions or whatever, and just go from there. Don’t, don’t lose your shit on that. People ask. It’s not a big deal. It can’t be frustrating, but just it means people are looking at your ad, even if they’re scammers.
Okay, so here’s the biggest scam that came through. This was via Craigslist, so. There’s two main ones that come through. So the boring one is as soon as it’s listed, someone will ping me. So I, I, I had a phone number listed and you could contact me via email or you could contact me via Craigslist chat. So what I have observed is people will, people will ping you on your.
Phone via text, and they will say, Hey, I’m interested in your item. And they’ll list out whatever the title is exactly, and then they’ll say, send me an email, and they’ll put the email on there. Well, I’m like, that’s weird. Something’s off with that because I said, you can send me an email via Craigslist or you could text me.
But I didn’t say, text me and then try to get me to email. So what they’re trying to do is get you to email them directly. So then they have your email so they can then spam you and try to do whatever it is they’re trying to do. I don’t even know what it is, but, but basically they should be emailing you through the email relay, which keeps your email address and their email address.
Anonymous through Craigslist. So basically if you go to Craigslist, you can click reply and it’ll show like via email and then it’ll create this, I think relay is the right word, but basically you send it to a, some crazy address, address Craigslist, and then it goes to their email and then they, they reply back and it goes through Craigslist.
And that way your email address and the other person’s email address are, they’re still anonymous, right? So you never see it directly. So that’s, that’s fine. So when I saw people were like, Hey, email me. I was like, no, you email me. And then they’re like burner numbers. The whole, the whole thing’s a scam.
So if you see that happen, it usually happens like right when you list it. So I’m like, oh wow, people are interested. And I’m like, wait a second, people aren’t interested. Okay, so that one was kind of a dumb one. This one is a decent one. So they sent me a text and they’re like, Hey, I am very interested.
They were like, Hey, can we meet tomorrow? And you know, punctuation was a little bit off and things were a little funny. But I was like, oh, can, can you meet me over? At the Costco and we’ll do the deal there. And they were, they didn’t answer, but they were like, yeah, we can meet at nine. And they were asking a few things.
They was like you know what, since I’m gonna meet you can, can you go ahead and send me the, I forget what they called it. It’s like A-A-G-G-W papers. And I was like, what is GW papers? And they were like, oh, you go to this website and it’s like a title search. And I like did some research and I was like.
What is this site? It’s weird. Like it, it looks legit and it looks like it’ll gimme a title search and it kind of adds up. And I was like, what the fuck is this? Is, this doesn’t make sense. And w what I was doing is like I was going to the Colorado vehicle website. Giving you tips on how to sell a car or buy a car, right?
What you have to do from a paperwork perspective and all that kinda stuff. And they have a title search link on there, and then it’ll give you a bunch of different options for title search. So I was like, oh, I’m not gonna go to that website. So I did the free title search from a website, which was linked from the Colorado Department of Vehicles.
And I was like, you know what? I’m not gonna do your website, dude. Here’s the title search thing. And basically it’s a PDF. You can see it’s a clean title. And they were like, well, you know, I like this one because it does this stuff. And I was like, you know what? This is, this feels weird. I don’t know why this person is giving me a weird vibe, but they kind of are.
And I was like, Hey, you know what? Let’s hop on the phone, like, can I give you a call? And then they said, you know, I think we’re really close to a deal. I would hate for the deal to fall through because this GW search for the title costs $28. Like can you please pay the $28? And then I was like, you know what?
Fuck that. I’m not paying $28. You pay the 20. I mean, I didn’t say that in my head. I’m thinking, fuck you, you pay $28, right? Like, I’m not paying money to sell my car. Get the fuck outta here. So anyway, I was like, Hey, I don’t want the deal to fall through. I’m definitely happy to check out your title search.
Let me just give you a call. So that was the key. I was like, let’s get on the phone. ’cause if I ask a few questions, I should be able to identify quickly if you. Or even in the state if you are local at all, and if you know where I’m talking about meeting and just a couple like weed out questions. Of course, once I start asking about, Hey, let’s hop on the phone we’re just gonna talk for like two minutes.
Let’s, let’s, uh, stop texting. Let’s hop on the phone. So anyway, stop responding. And basically, I don’t know what the scam was, if it was like to try to get me to pay $28, like they were some sort of marketing arm to trick people that are selling their car to get a title search thing, which should generally be free.
Yeah, sometimes you have to pay, but like if you’re getting that level, there’s a commercial level of these sort of title searches. I don’t know much about it, but I was like, either they’re trying to get me to buy this thing that I don’t need, or they could be trying to, you know, capture payment data and credit card information and that sort of thing.
So I don’t know what the scam was, but that’s the thing. It doesn’t matter what the scam is, if it feels weird. Pull the plug, get outta there. Like there’s no, there is no scenario where I’m gonna pay to do a title search. Like if someone wants to take the card to a mechanic, I’m not gonna pay for it. You get your mechanic to pay for it, and you give me a report like I’m not paying money to do my transaction.
So that was one. One of the biggest things, and I, I think people could get talked into it if they’re like, well, you know, I don’t wanna lose the deal because I’m just not willing to pay $28. But I was like, something’s funny on that.
Okay. I was contacted by someone locally, they pinged me and they seemed, they seemed legit overall, but they did have like, errors in punctuation and some formatting and some language stuff, but I don’t think English was their first language. In fact I ended up talking to that guy on the phone because I, I did send a message and I was like, Hey, I just wanna make sure you’re real. There’s a lot of scammers. But he actually made like a soft offer and I was like, yeah, like.
I think we can make it happen. He lives like a town over. He was answering some questions. Well, so I knew he was a, a town over, but then he actually called without me even asking. He, I was just like, eh, I just wanna make sure you’re real. Like, are you in the area? Asked like a question or two. And then he called and then we chatted on the phone and he was like, Hey, I’m sorry I speak Spanish.
English isn’t my first language. But. You know, let’s try to talk through it. So we talked through it. We were planning on meeting up. It turned out that once he reviewed his finances and chatted with his wife, he was like, ah, you know, I, I can’t, we, I can’t do it. Like it’s a little bit tight this month, so I can’t do it and I don’t wanna waste your time.
So kudos to that guy. I actually thanks him later and sent him a message and I was like, Hey, I did sell the truck, blah, blah, blah. Okay, as we’re wrapping up here, so what happened was, it seemed like I. Someone was a scammer, and they, they pinged me. They were like, Hey, is the truck still available? Which is exactly what some of the scammers do.
They’re like, Hey, is the truck still available? But you never know. So I was like, yeah, still available. And they were like, Hey, my name’s Orion. And I was like, is this a fake name? Like, I didn’t say that, but I was like, it’s a fake name. So it went back and forth and it seemed legit. It seemed pretty legit, and went back and forth.
A little bit. He asked a few questions. I gave a little bit more information. I sent over the clean title searches that I got, and you could see that they were, you know, from the Colorado website or a similar legit website. He made me an offer, so I listed it for $6,477. You always gotta make, make the last digit of seven, right?
It’s like all the internet marketing. Lessons that I’ve learned on pricing, they still hold up. So he, he was, um. He was reasonable. And he was like, can you negotiate a little bit? And I’m like, yeah, I’ll, I’ll accept, you know, any reasonable offers, like, go ahead, make your offer. Um, and I did note cash, so that, that’s one other big thing, cash only.
And I’ll, I’ll tell you a little bit more about that. But anyway, he made an offer of 6,000 and this is where I didn’t even negotiate back. I could have. A lot of times you get an offer and then you meet in the middle and it’s like, Hey, let’s meet in the middle. But I was like, 6,000. That’s legit.
Like I, I will take that. And I just accepted it. I didn’t go back and forth. That was a good offer in my opinion. One reason why is like when I chatted with my wife and she was like, ah, like what? Like what will you be really happy with if you get it? And I was like. I’ll be happy if I get $5,000, I’ll be like, that would be pretty spot on.
And she went outta town like right after that. I was like, yeah, I think I’m gonna list it tomorrow. And that’s when she was heading outta town. And then, uh, the, I closed the whole deal within 30 hours, so I listed it in the morning and the next afternoon it, it was sold absolutely crazy. So went back and forth a little bit.
And one reason why you kind of just need to accept cash and nothing else, even for a huge transaction. It was literally the most cash I’ve ever had. It was like $6,000 bills, which is like a pretty significant stack. Basically, we have ways to pay electronically and you know, Zelle, there’s Venmo, there’s a couple other, I, you know, PayPal, there’s other stuff.
The issue is someone can make a claim and do basically like a chargeback situation if you do an electronic payment and there’s kind of, there’s not much you could do about it. I think it could be a hassle. I mean, obviously if they have your, your vehicle and you have their information, you have the bill of sale and the other kind of stuff that you have to do, then Okay.
Like you could unravel it and probably like make sure you get your money, but it’s still pain in the ass. Cash is just like. Straight up value. There’s no bullshit. The other thing is I, I also did a little research on taking like a cashier’s check, but it’s hard to verify those and they can be faked. So I think the only way I would actually accept a cashier’s check is if I went to the bank with a person where they, like I saw the cashier’s check was like.
Print it out and at that point you’re at the bank, just gimme the cash and we’ll do that. I was slightly hoping that we like banked at the same place so he could withdraw the cash and then I could just put it directly in my account and not be walking around with all that cash, which I literally did. I literally like drove to a place, sold the truck, and then I walked back home.
With $6,000 in my pocket, which is crazy. There’s like a, a scene from a superstore for the people that know, that show where Bo would walk around with $5,000 cash in his pocket side. Tangent won’t even get into it, but, but basically. Cash is exactly what you want to accept. And you know, the person had to go to the, the bank and like get some stuff put together and whatever.
And I think they went, they went to the bank, got the cash, and then came to meet me. We did the deal in like 15 minutes. There’s some paperwork to fill out, make sure you do it right, blah, blah, blah. Bill of sale, some other stuff. But at that point we had built quite a lot of trust. Again, if you’re telling the person what is.
Also what is wrong with the thing that you’re selling that builds some trust and, and it saves a lot of time too, because basically if someone, like, if I was buying a used car, I’d be going around like kicking all the tires. I, I’m pretty direct too, so I’m like, what is wrong with your product? Like. Tell me the issues that you have.
And in fact, like tomorrow I’m gonna check out a guitar, and I’ve been sort of pinging people and, and asking them, and I’m like, what is wrong with it? I see there’s some wear, there’s some normal things that I expect, but I’m asking you like, tell me what’s wrong with it. And sometimes they’re like, oh, I don’t know nothing.
Like, everything’s fine. Usually people, like if you ask directly, they will kind of try to tell you so. Because I mentioned all this stuff that was wrong. There was very little tire kicking. It was very clear to see. There were new tires and just generally like things were exactly how I described it. So there was a lot of trust there.
He did ask about having a mechanic check it out. Which is a wise thing to do if you’re buying a used car like that is sort of the advice, even if it’s, you know, sort of a, a newer car or even if it’s an older car. Now, the thing is, I have a, a friend who he does a lot of buying and selling of, of used cars.
From my understanding, at least over the years, he mentioned that if it’s below $5,000 or so, then. It’s often cheap enough where people will show up with cash. Quickly. And if someone does wanna take it to a mechanic, he’s like, well, there’s a lot of people calling about this. So if you wanna take it to a mechanic, that’s fine, but it needs to fit into a tiny little window.
You should have an appointment. Maybe we just meet directly there and you have your people check it over you, by the way, you’re paying for the mechanic to look at it. And I would like to get the report afterwards and that way it would save some time. But basically the My friend said. If it’s under 5,000 bucks, then people are gonna show up with cash.
So when the new owner of my truck asked me about a mechanic, I was like, cool, if you wanna do it, that’s great. But basically I have like backup offers, which I did. I had some, again, sort of soft offers, but people were very interested in in the car, and I’m like, they’ll come check it out immediately after you and.
Whoever, you could take it to a mechanic, but it needs to be quick and it needs to be this afternoon because basically whoever shows up with cash first will get the truck. And I was shocked at how quick the whole thing happened. My wife was even more shocked again, she was outta town. So by the afternoon I was like, Hey, the truck’s gone.
So she left and she was like, oh yeah, it could be the last time I see the truck. But I don’t even know if you believe that, but. It was so, it was so incredibly fast. And the thing is, I think, I mean, it was so fast where I’m like, did I price it too low? But the other thing is, especially with selling a vehicle, which most of us probably don’t do this very often, and I mean, for me, the last time I bought a vehicle was 18 years ago.
And then I actually, I helped my wife a little when she got her car like 14 years ago. So. The thing is, maybe I could have gotten a little bit more money based on how quickly it sold. However, there’s a time element and the thing that I didn’t want to happen was. For this to go on for like three weeks where I’ve met like six or seven people and you have to do the scheduling stuff and then it’s like you let them test drive it.
You let them take your car and drive it around, and there’s some risk involved with that. Side note, I told anyone who wanted to test drive it, which it ended up only being one person, even seeing it. Basically. I was like. Bring your license and proof of insurance. And I like took a picture and saw like, okay, I have their id, they have insurance.
And I picked a location where like someone can basically drive on low traffic streets and you know, get the truck up to speed, kind of drive around a little bit and be very close and feel like they were able to, you know, actually test drive the truck. And I didn’t go with him by the way, so I just, I let him take it.
The one thing I did again. At the suggestion of my friend is I gave them the keys and then I was like, give me your keys. And they were a little bit like, I’m not gonna give you my keys. I’m like, well, you have my keys and you’re driving my truck, so just if you could leave me your keys, like then we both have some skin in the game here.
So eventually they, they were cool with that, but I didn’t want it. I didn’t want the whole thing to go on for several weeks and be a drag. So the fact that I was able to sell it quickly was fantastic, even though. Maybe I could have gotten a little bit more, the incremental gain of selling it for 500 more dollars would not be worth all the messages that you get.
’cause I probably had. At least 20 different individuals ping me and ask some question about it. Some of them were bs. I would say probably 25% of ’em were legit, so probably, you know, five real people. The others, they could have been real, but I have a hunch that they were some sort of bot or some sort of.
Scam system that they were, they were running. You know, if you, if you’re on Facebook marketplace and you like see that someone just joined Facebook two years ago and they have three friends, probably not legit. So that’s a, that’s an easy way to filter ’em out. And overall it was a great experience. And as I, I wrap it up here, I’ll mention that I, I think.
I think that the Facebook, even though I ended up selling it via Craigslist, the Facebook marketplace, which I have not done much transacting in at all. I know friends that are in there all the time basically. Because you can see their profile and see like some of their transaction history a little bit.
It does bring a little bit more confidence when you’re actually like dealing with someone, or you could immediately tell that they’re not a real person and they don’t have a real profile and all that kind of stuff. So I wish there was a better way for. For us to like, filter out on those where, I mean, it maybe it is a little tough for Facebook.
I, I’m not really sure, but I mean, I imagine they don’t want people getting scammed or having basically fake profiles like bugging people when they’re trying to sell stuff. So the only cost that I incurred was to list a vehicle on Craigslist. Cost five bucks. So I paid five bucks and that, that was like the only thing you can, I think, boost your marketplace listings on Facebook.
But I was like, you know what, I’m just gonna let it, let it fly the way it is. So overall, the other thing, the other thing is, I talked to someone who had a bad experience going to CarMax where they, they will, you know, buy your car. And here’s, here’s the thing, right? So like the Kelly Blue Book. Offer like they’ll make you offer right away, like that stuff.
And then going to CarMax, they paint it as like being a lot easier than dealing with actually selling your vehicle yourself. And the thing is like, they have a framework, right? Like they have the paperwork, they guide you through it. If you have a question, they’ll answer it. If you’re selling it yourself, like I had to.
Fucking read the documentation on the Colorado website. I had to like read, I had to make sure I had my title, I had to read the title. I had to drive the whole situation. And there’s like tons of uncertainty. I don’t know what’s gonna happen. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take. I don’t know who I’m gonna deal with.
I don’t know if they’re gonna try to scam me or whatever. And you have to be very cautious. But the thing is. I think I put as much time and effort into it as I would have if I went to CarMax and sold it and only got, I’m just making it up, but $2,000, like I spent the same amount of time. ’cause I have heard of people that like drive up to the CarMax, they’ll have them kick the tires and do all the check.
Checklist stuff and then they drive back home. So that’s like a couple, few hours right there. And then they have to go back up and they do all the paperwork and I’m, I’m hoping it’s not as much paperwork as when you buy a car, even when you buy a car in cash. Like they do a credit check, which I. Is completely stupid.
Like why are, why like I’m giving you the cash. You don’t need to run my credit. I’m not borrowing any money. I don’t want to hear any of your song and dance or anything like that, but you still have to do all that. My point being, I assume that going up to CarMax is still like, still takes a while ’cause you have to do some paperwork and some other crap.
Maybe it’s easier. Than buying a car. Not sure, but from where I sit, I sold it so quickly and I got so much more money, dramatically more money than whatever a dealer would offer me. I can’t believe I even considered it. I mean, I guess I had to to check and other people were like, well, you couldn’t take it up to CarMax.
But now I see, yeah, that’s just a dumb, dumb idea. So I would say, unless you have like a super sought after car, probably not the best choice. And I mean there, there were uncertain things I had to deal with, but. It was interesting doing something new and because it worked out, I do feel good about it. So I’ve been doing a lot of stuff on Craigslist and Facebook marketplace and I think viable option if you’re into flipping stuff and like looking for good deals and all that kind of thing.
Like I said, I’m gonna check out a guitar tomorrow if I end up getting it or not. I’ll probably tell you about it pretty soon. So. I think that’s that I will give one little plug for audio books, right? Audio books. I listen to a lot of podcast and I think, I don’t know, there was like a little stretch where I was like, you know what?
None of these headlines are catching my eyes. So, you know what? I’m not gonna listen to a podcast. And I went, went back over to Audible, the, the power of like a, of a, of a written book or an audio book. An actual book that has been edited. It’s like higher quality. It’s, it’s so much higher quality than a podcast because a lot of times podcasters like myself, we just talk.
I mean, this whole, I was just telling you a story today, a few stories of what I’ve been up to, and the preparation I did was this post-it note here, so it’s not edited, you know. It’s pretty raw and I like listening to those. But every now and then, I think, you know what, I need to check out some audio books.
So the one I listened to was by Duff McKagan, and it’s, it’s, it’s so easy. Is that, what is that the name of it? Let me just double check. I literally just finished it, but I was a huge fan of guns N Roses. Yeah, it’s so easy. Duff McKagan, he’s the bassist for, guns N Roses and Velvet Revolver and anyway, always a big fan of Guns N Roses and velvet revolver and turns out duff’s.
Really awesome. Crazy story. Super interesting. I think I finished it in like two days, maybe three, but. Such an awesome story. And it was cool, like hearing the background now I’m like, oh, you know what? I need to get slashes. I think he has a book too, but those guys are crazy. I don’t know how they even survive.
So a little plug for audio books. I did, you know what I, I. Have an audible subscription. I encourage y’all to check it out. I think if you follow the link in the description, there’s a deal. When I looked at it a few minutes ago, it appeared to be like 99 cents per month for the first three months.
But depending on when you listen to this, when you check out the deal. But anyway, usually if you haven’t joined Audible in the last few years, if you join, you get some kind of killer promo and you get. A few credits depending on what deal they’re doing, but definitely check it out. And if you like rock and roll stories, then the, the Duff McKagan, it’s so easy.
Story is a good one. Very smart dude. Very smart dude. And you know, I had a, it’ll have to be another topic for another day, but the, the main, the main idea was when, when Guns N Roses and, and many other bands, guns N Roses were like at their height. And at the very beginning they’re like in their mid t, they’re like early to mid twenties.
Like they are so young and it’s insane, like what they were doing and the success that they had. And I mean, usually what you end up understanding is like those people were like obsessed with being musicians or whatever their art is when they were like eight or 10 years old and then they like kept.
Kept at it like when they were young. So by the time they were 20, they had like 10 years experience. So you see this across the board with like, musicians or athletes or anyone else, like really qualified or really successful at a young age. So anyway, it’s another topic for another day, but I was like, I spent those, those years doing.
Physics and calculus and I’m like, was that a total waste? I don’t even use that shit now. Like my brain was ready to absorb all this stuff and I was doing, you know, nerdy academic things. I, I don’t, I, I mean, I guess maybe there’s some value actually, if you have any suggestions on what the value might have been.
’cause I, I’m like, I’m not doing that stuff anymore, but those guys are still playing guitar and making music and all that stuff, so. Alright. I’m leaving you with an with an open end, but if you have any questions, thoughts, or comments on selling or buying on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace, shoot me an email feedback at Doug show.
If you’re on the YouTube side, you of course can leave a comment there and we’ll catch on the next episode. Oh, yeah, follow, follow the link for the audible. If you wanna check it out. Check out some audio books. There’s some good audio books out there. And. You can get a deal if you follow my link, which is an affiliate link.
Alright, catch y’all next time.