Should I be suspicious?

I posted an ad on CL, for some snow tires. Header is clearly titled, ad is very descriptive*. I got an email asking about them.

CL emailer said: I would like to know if you still have this item for sale? Awaiting your reply Murray Washington

The fishy part is that with Yahoo webmail, in the "From" column, the name is Mark Williams. The e-addy is christian.lauson@whatever.

Three different names?

*After reading threads about CL nightmares from you guys, I had best not make the mistake of being picked out by one of you.

The fact that they ask "If you still have this item for sale?" makes me think that it is a scam before I even get to the names.

Don't even reply to emails like those. They're just looking to spam your email address.

Sometimes I'll put a disclaimer in the ad, "If this listing is active [this item] is still for sale." But most of the time I don't bother with that either. Unless you're desperate to sell or you're selling to a really small audience and you can't afford to piss off a single potential buyer, I don't think you really need to worry too much about it.

ANY ad of mine that is less than 24 hours old gets a reply like that.

If the word "Item" is anywhere in the ad...it's fishing. (phishing...whatever I don't give a you-know-what)

If they ask only "where is it"...it's fishing

If they ask if you still have it...and nothing else...it's phishing or they don't realize how spam works and will have to figure it out another day.

Clem

Yeah, I wasn't going to respond to this email. I just thought I'd share it with you guys, because of the three different names.

Botnets are ruining it, but if your sender is old school, there is a good chance you can find the IP address of the sender in the email headers, and then research the address to get a general idea of what part of the planet sent you the email.

Caveats: proxies, NAT, botnets, public wifi, internet cafes, and the fact that an IP isn't a person mean you can't do anything with it, but it can often be an interesting exercise.

Mark Williams is my financial advisor. No wonder returns have been good this year. He's working overtime running scams on CL.

I got one of these a while back when I was selling an MG rear axle. It was highly entertaining as I tried to get him to admit how he was going to use the part, then I turned the scam around on him and said I'd accidentally sent too much money back to him so I needed him to send me another check. It got very fun.

yup scam... run into it about every time I sell something on CL :-/... get used to it.

Funny thing is that I've received a couple of spam responses lately that were screwed up.

In the subject line of one it simply said "Target subject" which I thought was hilarious.

In the email text of another it said something along the lines of, "I'm very interest in your 'pasted'. Can you please get back with me about its conditions."

Pasted...lol. Someone is getting lazy or some bot script is screwed up and not merging fields properly...or something.

What Alex said. Don't even mess with it.

I had one offer to insure a table I was selling. Insurance on a table? lol

I had a guy trying to test drive my carburetor.

I got a couple before I wised up, if you reply they respond with "well I can't afford it now blah blah blah but I'm starting this new work at home program that you can try too and make tons of money click here"

Looks pretty dubious - the most common followup I've seen (yes, I've seen multiple, near word for word identical, emails when I replied to them) was some story about being an oceanographer whose ship was about to sail, and would I take PayPal... figured he'd probably "overpay" with a stolen account, and dropped it.

I just pulled up that email conversation with "denny".

He wanted to buy my MG axle for $100. I told him up front I wouldn't send any extra money if the check was for too much. Then his secretary accidentally made out the check for $1900 instead of $100. So I told him I'd keep the money and give him the MGB shell as well and please alert the shipper. He should take the extra money out of his secretary's pay. It's like he just skipped over the stuff he didn't like, so he ignored that.

Then I sent him a fake Western Union confirmation number but I'd accidentally sent him $17,500 instead of $1750, so please send me $15,000 back and he could keep the balance for his trouble. I also set up a pickup time between 11:30 pm and midnight on Friday. The fake confirmation number and the request for money back really tied him up, it was hilarious.

I also got a scammer to send a $10,000 check for my $900 323 GTX after I re-evaluated the value of the car mid-negotiation. I had him send it to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave in Washington.

Bwahahaha, Keith! That's a hoot. :D