We've worked very hard on the Fiberglass-rv-4sale website over the last 5 years to protect against molded fiberglass selling scams. Our Scam Alerts and education posts have seriously curtailed Scam selling activity in the molded fiberglass trailers, but they still are fairly frequent on Craigslist trailer ads and they even slip one by us once in awhile.
The best thing is to be educated on how Scammers work. The story from Salina KS shows one of their common techinques to defraud a buyer.
Salina man taken in Craigslist scam for Scamp Trailer
There are several clues in this story that a prudent buyer needs to be aware of:
- Buying sight unseen
- Shipping arrangements for a trailer you haven't seen
- No details on the trailer, but the price was probably enticing
- Sending money without inspecting, verifying and taking the trailer with you
- If there is a phone number and/or email in the ad, Google it and see if it appears on all types of suspicious ads
We also have a buying guidlines posted on the for sale site with some additional information on how to buy safely.
Educate yourself on the buying process and use caution, we don't want any SOI members to end up being scammed. If you run into anything when buying that seems questionable, post it here in the clubhouse so the members can help you with advice.
Also, asking for "prepaid" cards are common to a lot of scams.
I cannot count the number of times I have reported the scams to the websites that they appear on. Say, if and I probably did see a Scamp advertised for $2,500 (unless it was very old and rough it is suspicious), I google for "Scamp $2500" and a list will come up with as many as a 12 or 15 ads all the same posted for different cities across the internet. I report everyone of them! Some require you to leave an email address if you are reporting and I keep a spare email address for odd things like that but have NEVER had any issues with a website that I reported a scam to spamming me. Why can't people remember that "if it sounds to good to be true, it probably isn't". Taking of advantage of older people/children and animals should get one, well, something not good. You get these scams on the fiberglass trailers but also some of the better, smaller and hard to find stick built. My compliments and thank you to Fiberglass RVs 4 Sale since I regularly check the website and always note what might be newly listed in the "Scam" area.
Cathy